Duane Michal photo analysis

Chance Meeting

Duane Michals’s “Chance Meeting”, is a photographic series, shot in 1970, that expresses gay hiddenness, something that is very evident to a viewer familiar with Michals’s work. The series portrays two ordinary men passing each other on the street, exchanging a glance of what the artist intents to be desire and then turning their heads back as they keep walking to see each other one last time. What I find interesting is the homosexual subtext of each image which, at first glance, could not be as evident to the viewer. In an era where being queer is considered abnormal and strange, homosexuality is viewed as a “prohibited” desire, forced to be kept secret. Hence the look on the characters’ faces. To other people passing by in the storyline, or even to some viewers of the series, this could be perceived as a meaningless encounter. Whereas to the protagonists of the story as well as people who have experienced the same struggles as them, it could be easier to translate the subtext of the photographs. Therefore, as little as a simple glance could mean so much to certain people depending on their past experiences, struggles, desires and relationshipsDuane Michals artnet news

Dr Heisenberg's Magic Mirror of Uncertainty

World art foundation

In his 1998 series called “Dr. Heisenberg’s Magic Mirror of Uncertainty”, Michals was inspired by quantum physics and a theory by Werner Heisenberg that said you cannot predict with any certainty the position or velocity of a particle. Therefore, the distorted mirror symbolizes the chaos that characterizes interactions inside the subatomic world of particles. Hence, this uncertainty is depicted through the photographic series by the mirror. Unlike usual mirrors, in this case the distorted reflection depends on the angle that it is being held. Thus, much like Heisenberg’s theory, there is a certain element of chaos that characterizes each image. From my point of view, this could be translated into how we, as individuals, perceive our reality. Life experiences are shapeshifting depending on the angle that we choose to approach them. Meaning that the way we feel about certain things is a mere result of how we perceive them. Taking that into consideration, one can fully be in control of their emotional state only by changing their mentality on how to approach different subjects. We can’t be in control of what happens to us; however, we can control how we react to it.