Magic touch

‘I’m quite willing to abandon the rules about what a photograph is,’ says the American art photographer Duane Michals, the mastermind behind Loewe’s latest A/W 2018 menswear publication. The series of images, shot at the Teatro Reina Victoria in Madrid, Spain, and devised in collaboration with M/M Paris, stars actor and Loewe campaign star Josh O’Connor as ‘Francois Fauxpas’, a top-hat clad failed magician, who attempts to perform a series of miscalculated tricks on the model Erik Frey. Michals’ black and white pantomine-centric images, which feature giant playing cards, flying chairs and crystal balls, will feature in a hardcover photo book in a limited edition of 1,200 hand-numbered copies. Here, in conversation with O’Connor, he reveals more about his practice, from the emotive lies captured in photography to its need to reveal an educative narrative thread…