Duane Michals – The Man Who Invented Himself

Duane Michals is internationally recognized as one of the most original photographers of our time, the originator of a new way to tell stories through photos, and highly influential to the work of many contemporary authors. One of his pieces, hung on the walls of her doctor/collector father’s house, encouraged Sophie Calle to pick up photography. Like Michals’ B+W photo-sequences, the film wends its way through a series of vaguely surreal “microstories”. Traveling with his suitcase, an umbrella, a bowler hat and a pair of wings, the ‘young octagenarian’ shows and interprets moments of his life and episodes inspired by his work with touching delicacy and brilliant irony. A special place is reserved for the portfolio dedicated to Réne Magritte, shot at the artist’s house in Brussels in 1965. With his interlocutors and his own mirror-image, the documentary’s protagonist speaks of art and poetry, love and death, returning time and again to his relationship with photography, re-proposing several of his famous compositions, written on paper in his unmistakable handwriting: “[…] I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing”.