Artist Statement
I recently told someone (with a straight face) that I make photographs to ward off evil. Perhaps I am a practitioner of a new and makeshift form of genteel voodoo. Each fresh photograph is a spell or incantation. This is new Juju, sanitized, pseudo-Santeria that employs objects rich with association and/or brimming with nostalgia. With these images I am photographically petitioning and attempting to placate the Gods. I pray for good fortune, boons and blessings. Giving in to my inner hypochondriac, I beg to avoid specific maladies and misfortune. In so many ways, photography is magical. It’s easy to get carried away by the process.
I am photographing natural objects and cultural artifacts often in juxtaposition. I call this project, started in 2010, Miscellanea. I am documenting my workingman’s wunderkammer – a promiscuous assemblage of specimens and the often worn, cracked and frayed products of human craft. From the Renaissance to the 18th century, the cabinet of curiosities celebrated the act of collection for its own sake. Specimens – organic remains or all sorts – and manmade objects were artfully arranged side by side for the viewer’s amusement. While not a well-heeled aristocrat, I too collect. Since I was a young boy I have been interested in the flotsam and jetsam of yesteryear and any object that references a specific age or place. I like the way these objects are transformed by time and take on and shed significance. Our individual histories are cluttered with fragments, experiences kept alive by mementoes. In re-purposing these fragments, this work is about re-incarnation and re-birth – a rusty razor blade is given new purpose, new form, new life.
I explore and exploit the attraction-repulsion response evoked by vivid color and precise detail (attraction) and insects, reptiles, and all things post mortem (repulsion). I often arrange and picture objects in ways that confound one’s sense of relative scale (specimens and objects are often larger than life in 14” x 21” prints). And like the surrealists, I love odd juxtapositions and Magritte’s idea of the “poetically disciplined image” that poses rather than answers questions.
Process Statement
I begin by arranging objects on a horizontal surface with the camera above pointing down. These images are not collage - they are fully constructed before the camera as seen in the print and I rarely crop in post-processing. I shoot with a macro lens and use a process that is unique to digital photography: focus stacking. Focus stacking software was developed for science and research and allows a macro photographer to shoot multiple frames each focused on a different plane in space and then merge the exposures to create an image with extended depth of field. After the objects are arranged and lit, I make up to 30 exposures each focused on an incrementally different spot in front of the lens. While focus stacking is tedious, it provides exceptional clarity from the top (objects closest to the lens) to the bottom (objects farthest from the lens). The resulting images are strikingly detailed and intriguingly un-photographic. The depth of field is unnatural, pictorial space is flat and the perspective (from above) allows for configurations that defy gravity.
Daniel Mosher Long studied photography at Bennington College, Purdue University and R.I.S.D. He works as a professor of photography, coordinator of the Photography Option and co-chair of the Art Department at Manchester Community College in Manchester, CT. In the past few years his work has been exhibited (among other places) at Panopticon Gallery in Boston, as part of Griffin Photography Museum’s “Photo(gogues) NE ” in Boston, at the Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY, at the 100 Pearl Street Gallery in Hartford, CT and the Flinn Gallery in Greenwich, CT and it has been featured in ArtAscent and Adore Chroma magazines. Daniel received a Connecticut Artist Fellowship Grant in 2006.