Duane Michals

Most photographs, to me, are description, but they lack insight.

A lot of photographers walk around looking for something 'out there,' but I'm very much interested in what's 'in here.'

I think photographers are too polite. There is not enough anger in photography; it's pretty much trivialized.

You can't see fear or lust; you can't photograph someone's anxieties, how disappointment feels. Photographs are approximations.

Even in the deepest love relationship - when lovers say 'I love you' to each other - we don't really know what we're saying, because language isn't equal to the complexity of human emotions.

I'm a terrible punster. And I love to rhyme. I just can't help myself.

In the West, people tend to look at life as spectators, but in the East, people are the thing.

I'm very hard on the art world just being a big business.

Photography is very presumptuous. Photographers are always photographing other people's lives - something they know nothing about - and drawing great inferences into it.

Photographers usually want to photograph facts and things. But I'm interested in the nature of the thing itself. A photograph of someone sleeping tells me nothing about their dream state; a photograph of a corpse tells me nothing about the nature of death. My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.

My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.

The only thing I know anything about are my own fantasies and anxieties. I don't trust my eyes. I consider myself to be a short-story writer.