Duane Michals: "Dr. Heisenberg’s Magic Mirror of Uncertainty" 1998

Duane Michals, Dr. Heisenberg’s Magic Mirror of Uncertainty, 19.8×24.7 cm (ea), 1998

Handwriting below photographs:

• “Odette can never be sure with any certainty which reflection of herself she will see in the mirror.”
• "The act of looking in the mirror affects what the image will be."
• “Uncertainty permits anything and everything”.

Werner Heisenberg, The Uncertainty Principle and Quantum Mechanics, from the American Institute of Physics:

http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08.htm

I'm not speaking in hyperbole when I say I've been a fan of Duane Michals for a long time. I

remember first seeing his work in a World Book Encyclopedia. It was an image of "Paradise Regained" from 1968 and perhaps it fed into my love for an interesting story. That series of photos was also acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1989.

To this day I'm thankful to whoever gave that behemoth set of encyclopedia volumes to my father and mother. I believe they sometimes managed to bridge a gap.