Duane Michals

Duane Michals is a mostly self taught American photographer. His work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy.

Is it strange to have a fetish for words? Does that even exist? Yes. I'm here to tell you it does. I'm a big fan of "words". I love to write, I love to learn new words, play word puzzles, examine and understand languages, and translate words into different languages. I'm also extremely visual. So, it's no surprise that I would take to Michals work.

I came across the photo above [The Nature of Desire] looking through a photography book at Barnes & Noble one random day and I've been a fan ever since. It reads, "the most beautiful part of a man's body I think it must be there, where the torso sits on and, into the hips, those twin delineating curves, feminine in grace, girdling the trunk, guiding the eyes downwards to their intersection, the point of pleasure."

Francoise Nielly

I stumbled upon this image browsing the web one day and immediately fell in love. The painting is by Francoise Nielly, a woman who lives and paints in France. She describes her oil and knife paintings as "expressive, exhibiting a brute force, a fascinating vital energy".

I'm definitely not a fan of anything "beige" and this is anything but that. There is so much light, passion, and emotion in not only the color, but the technique. It's pretty amazing, and so is the rest of her work. Check out her website for more info.

Francoise Nielly