Duane Michals, Foto Follies (2)

Last fall, I noted the publication of a new book, Foto Follies: How Photography Lost Its Virginity on the Way to the Bank by Duane Michals and suggested that it sounded like it would be worth tracking down. Michals appears at right in a self-portrait from 2000. Today I found the book and it is a scream, a terrific send-up of the photographers and what passes for critical discourse in the chatter surrounding them in the art world. He skewers many photographers, some of whom I quite like, with a wry and penetrating eye. The book opens with a series of photographs of Michals aka Sidney Sherman. Here is the first of those images and the caption Michals attaches to it.

“Sidney paints his fingernails shocking pink, a brilliantly audacious gesture that exposes the discorroborative bias of Revlon’s vacuity, while trenchantly confirming lipstick as a phallic ploy of alpha males vis-à-vis Derrida’s strategies of discorroboration.”

Exactly so!

Both Images in this post © Duane Michals.

Duane Michals, Foto Folllies

Jeorg Colberg over at Conscientious brought this forthcoming book to my attention - Duane Michals Foto Follies: How Photography Lost Its Virginity on the Way to the Bank (Steidl, 2007). It is billed as a succinct (96 pages), informed and humouous analysis of the pretentions of "art photography." Since I find most of what appears under that label overbearing, I look forward to getting a copy. Although I am unfamiliar with Michals' [*] work as a photographer, I plan to track some of it down if only because he seems to have a wicked satirical streak. Beyond that his practice of integrating text and ideas into his "photographic" work seems a welcome departure from the conventions of both "art" and "documentary" photography.