“I wanted to be a doctor.” Jean-François pauses, a twinkle in his eye. “I remember, I was 11 years old. It was December 3, 1967, the South African doctor, Christiaan Barnard, had just performed the first successful heart transplant on a 55-year old man, Louis Washkansky. It was...

03.09.2012[ read full story ]

Anthony Bannon is not one to follow other people’s scripts. Dismissing the cautionary message in Thomas Wolfe’s 1940 posthumous novel, “You Can’t go Home Again,” Bannon is coming home again to Buffalo, New York, the city where he grew up, studied, and first honed his skills as filmma...

14.05.2012[ read full story ]

”Eileen Ford is the mother, the ’godmother’ of all modeling agencies. She was sometimes challenged, but never matched, and she also incidentally introduced me to my wife Sondra”. These are Daniel Filipacchi’s words on the occasion of Eileen’s 90th birthday and it is writer Ro...

27.03.2012[ read full story ]

Always inspired by things Japanese, Sonny produced fan shape photographs in color in the manner of Hokusai and Hiroshige with Haiku poetry. Duane Michals now has returned to his early passion, painting on photographs with oils, hands on, the touch of the maker, the exquisite vulnerability of i...

21.02.2012[ read full story ]

With a grant from Paris Audiovisuel, Duane Michals did a series of charming fables about the City of Lights, couture, l’amour, cuisine, literature, Josephine Baker meeting Toulouse, Toklas meets Stein. Next a tale of Quantum and Metafisica for Clara Sels, Dusseldorf, and a satire on contempora...

21.02.2012[ read full story ]

Having liberated himself with language, Michals published many books, but his crown jewel was Questions without Answers, his most philosophic book. He also published a children’s book. A book about Egypt for Denoel of Paris, a Walt Whitman salute plus one for Cavafy, and a story about...

21.02.2012[ read full story ]

Simultaneously while doing his personal photography, Sonny always made his living as the most unprofessional professional photographer – no agent, no studio, no staff (except for a freelance assistant), and no overhead. He did covers for LIFE, TIME, Newsweek, Fortune, Mademoiselle, Th...

21.02.2012[ read full story ]

Being indecisive Duane Michals became frustrated with the decisive moment and began telling his own stories, thus inventing sequences. Suddenly a one man exhibition at MoMA, amazing! By 1965, Sonny was knocking at the door of the Wizard of Brussels, René Magritte. Yes, he did exist.
Sonny’s ...

21.02.2012[ read full story ]

During the Korean War, Sonny became a second lieutenant in armor when he was a green twenty-one and luckily exported to Deutschland. The alternative Korea certainly would have been his great goodbye.
Now a civilian again, Duane Michals was hired at TIME, Inc. as a graphic designer. On a lark...

21.02.2012[ read full story ]

At McKeesport High School, Sonny was the news editor of The Red and Blue. During his fifteenth summer, Duane Michals found his way to Amarillo, Texas with Jimmy Connelly on a Greyhound bus. There they hitchhiked up to the Oklahoma panhandle to work on the wheat crops. Alas they were too small....

21.02.2012[ read full story ]