Duane Michals: A Visit With Magritte

“If I indulge myself and surrender to memory,” writes photographer Duane Michals, “I can still feel the knot of excitement that gripped me as I turned the corner into Rue Mimosas, looking for the house of René Magritte. It was August, 1965. I was 33 years old and about to meet the man whose profound and witty surrealist paintings had contradicted my assumptions about photography.” Testimony to Magritte's ongoing influence down the generations, this book records Michals' visit with the great Belgian painter, and invites the viewer to follow him in his journey through the private realm of an artist who was one of his earliest heroes. The revelatory images of Magritte's home and the portraits of its inhabitants are at once distant and intimate, private and representative, humorous and calm, reflecting the evident respect that the man behind the camera felt for his subjects.