Artist Biography
I began studying Photography around 1965 at the Institute of Design in Chicago. My studies with Aaron Siskind, Joe Jachna, Arthur Siegal and Wynn Bullock gave me first hand experience with truly creative photographers.
At the Art Institute of Chicago around 1969, I began photographing the nude with Wendy, my wife, and I began making multiple image prints. Then for over thirty years I explored various techniques and processes while photographing the nude as a central theme.
I began digital image making with the Apple IIe in 1984 where I explored juxtapositions, ie. portraits on top of nudes and pigment against raster scan lines. This led into the idea of scanning my finished images of palladium diptychs of a nude in water and using it as a module for a new Photoshop series of composited images. Repeating the diptych image many times with strange overlaps create a surreal statement. Next I scanned a series of B&W Nimslo camera multiple image shots of figures. These I colorized and reduced in size using Photoshop so that the image bacame a color pattern where it was hard to discern the tiny nude.
In 1998 I began to work with pinhole photography. I use an oatmeal box pinhole camera to make 8x10 inch B&W negatives. With its extreme wide angle and distortion, the camera is a delight because it gives me results that are constantly a surprise. I develop the B&W negatives, scan them into Photoshop, and then colorize the image by pulling curves in each of the channels. It is a thrill to make an image rooted in 16th Century pinhole optics juxtaposited with 21 st Century digital print manipulations. These newest photographs of mine are a blend of these opposites.
In my diverse series, from multiple exposures, to juxtapositions of time, from plastic camera, Nimslo camera, scanner as camera to pinhole camera, I have always tried to find a mix of image and process with the nude as a theme.
I currently head the Photography program at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York where I teach photography classes and an Introduction to Digital Media class.
Artist Statement
For some thirty years, I've explored various techniques and processes while photographing the nude as a central theme. In 1998 I began to work with pinhole photography. Using an oatmeal box pinhole camera, I shoot 8x10 inch B&W film. With its extreme wide angle and distortion, the camera gives results that are constantly a surprise. I develop the B&W negatives, scan them into Photoshop, and then colorize the image. I use the distortions of the camera and the digital colorizations to create a series of visceral images that probe the unconscious, stepping away from the literal reality and choosing instead to speak with a Jungian expressionism. Objects juxtaposed with the model trigger a response that I react to while colorizing. Through successive pulling of curves B&W values are replaced with color in separate channels that ultimately connect with the dreamlike state of the finished image.
Dan McCormack
