Duane Michals is the king of the narrative, through his step by step photographic like 'movie' he produces. I have chosen two pieces of his photographic work to analyse, both following the narrative approaches we have learnt about.
"The Fallen Angel" is a piece of narrative I am familiar with and viewed in a gallery some years ago. If I was to place Duane Michals work in a narrative approach, I would place it in a "open structure", as the conclusion is not definite and we are left to make our own decisions. What is happening? Where is the mystery man going? Has he taken anything? We are also made to look at the photograph in more detail to try and answer our questions and come to a conclusion.
This is a circular narrative, the types of imagery we have been focussing on in our research as they relate exclusively to our final outcome. The beginning photographs shows a bathroom that looks normal, or so we think. We then see that the bathroom is small, and someone has put their foot in it. This makes us feel confused, we have misjudged the situation and now know the bathroom is a fake, it is very small and unreal! The third shows Duane Michals himself in the room with his foot in the middle. Why? What is he doing? The fourth shows the previous photograph in a book, possibly being held by Duane himself, talking about his photography and ways and means of doing things. The fifth is a zoomed out shot of this, not revealing much more apart from the person is sitting down to read! The whole narrative plays on our perceptions and come back to the place we started.
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