Duane’s World

Duane Michals, who made his reputation taking “old-fashioned” narrative pictures about sex, death, and family relationships, says he is glad he never went to photography school. “I never learned the rules: Don’t write or paint on photographs. Don’t set up any mise en scenes.” Though his dogma-bending innovations are now imitated by a younger generation and the San Francisco Museum of Modem Art is honoring him with a retrospective, Michals still feels like an outsider. “I don’t fit into any movements.

1 don’t know the latest intellectual treatises. And l don’t believe in appearances”—a paradox on the order of a hedonist who has no faith in pleasure. “If you say exactly what you’re afraid of in the most intimate way, the risks are greater. But so are the rewards. ” —AMY FINE COLLINS

AMY FINE COLLINS