DUANE MICHALS — A Visit with Magritte, Matrix Publications, Providence, Rhode Island, 1981

In August 1965, Duane Michals travelled to Brussels to photograph René Magritte at home. Over five days, the painter’s studio, bowler hat, domestic surroundings and familiar visual devices became the structure for a sequence of staged and observational portraits.

Magritte appears asleep, concealed by his own hand, framed beside painted figures and repeatedly performing with the bowler hat that had become part of his public image. These are not neutral records of a celebrated artist. Michals treats the visit as a collaboration between portraiture and Surrealism, moving between document, fiction and visual joke.

Magritte’s work was central to Michals’s understanding of photography. It demonstrated that an image could contradict what it appeared to show and that an ordinary setting could become psychologically unstable. Michals carried this approach into his own sequences, multiple exposures and combinations of photographs and handwritten text, rejecting the idea that photography simply records visible reality.

The book preserves a private encounter as a carefully ordered publication. Home becomes stage; portrait becomes performance; the photographed artist is returned through the visual language he helped make possible.

21 × 20 cm. 72 pages. Softcover in photographic wrappers; colour and black-and-white photographs; text in English. Condition: good. General rubbing, scratches and handling wear to the photographic wrappers, with minor creasing, edge wear and corner softening. Internally complete and generally clean.

Securely packed; tracked UK and international shipping available.