Michals, Duane. The Photographic Illusion....Masters of Contemporary Photography Series.

Alskog, 1975.  [How Michals creates his portraits and sequences, inc. "The Human Condition," "The Creation," and "Something Strange Is Happening."] Wraps, very fine except for slightly indented lines on rear cover.  Summary:

The Photographic Illusion: Duane Michals is a seminal volume in the celebrated Masters of Contemporary Photography series. The book serves as part instructional guide and part artistic monograph, offering a look behind the scenes at how Duane Michals constructs his highly conceptual imagery.

Key Focus Areas

• The Creative Core: The book investigates Michals' groundbreaking subversion of traditional photography. Rather than acting as a passive observer capturing reality, Michals uses the camera to construct "illusions"—visual fables that map out intangible human experiences such as memory, death, desire, and spirituality.

• The Dual Career: A major focus of the book is the intersection of Michals' personal fine art and his commercial assignments. It features examples of his self-directed, narrative photo-sequences alongside his high-profile commercial portraits and editorial features for major magazines, showcasing his ability to satisfy corporate art directors without losing his distinct personal voice.

• The Behind-the-Scenes Analysis: The volume provides deep breakdowns of some of his most famous early photo-sequences. Readers are given step-by-step insight into how he conceived and shot multi-frame conceptual narratives, utilizing practical, in-camera techniques like double exposures and deliberate motion blur to evoke a sense of the supernatural.

• The Technical Appendix: True to the format of the series, the book concludes with a dedicated technical section. This area details the specific equipment, films, exposure times, and staging methods Michals used to pull off his complex, thought-provoking imagery on a limited budget.