5:15 am, April 22, 1903, Duane Michals

Episode 166 Nov-2008, Ellen Raimond I’m David Cateforis with another Art Minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. Taking his cue from film stills and comics, the American artist Duane Michals casts himself and others in posed photographs staged within mundane settings. Michals created "5:15 am, April 22, 1903" for the April 1973 issue of Esquire magazine to accompany “The Heart in Dreams,” a Reynolds Price short story, told from multiple perspectives, about a young girl named Eva who runs away from home to marry her much older teacher. Michals portrays Eva’s nightmare as it unfolds in three horizontal rows of four black and white images. Linking the scenes together is the sinister presence of Eva’s father as he slips silently through his sleeping family’s simply furnished quarters. Michals conveys Eva’s understanding of her father’s insidious nature by showing us first Eva’s mother, then her brother and finally her sister being smothered in their own beds by the aging man. 5:15 am is currently on view in Time/Frame, a special exhibition at the Spencer through December 14th. With thanks to Ellen Raimond for her text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.