Daniel Gordon’s (b. 1980; Boston, MA) photographic collages combine still life and portraiture, constructed using both digital and analog methods. First, he builds a digital image of a still life. He then prints, cuts, and reassembles the dissected image into a new composition, then photographs the result, producing an image that, while flat, contains layers of manufactured depth. Gordon’s photographs draw on the transformative power of photography, creating alternate realities with disorienting shapes and vivid shades of red, green, and blue.
The artist has a long list of influences, from Cezanne to Picasso to Italian furniture designer of the 1980s, Ettore Sottsass. Similarly, the photographs are reminiscent of Fauvism, Cubism, and Dutch Still Life, which Daniel references by using images of fruit, plants, and vases familiar to the genre. With his wide array of influences, the artist’s work feels both familiar and uncanny, straddling the analog and digital age.
Gordon’s practice began with more straightforward photography, starting with his Flying Pictures he took while attending Bard College. The artist photographed himself, at the horizon, making a genuine attempt to fly. As his work became more process-based, he maintained the theme of extending what the medium can do, preferring not to capture reality but to distort it.
Gordon’s work has exhibited work has exhibited widely in solo and group shows, including at the Houston Center for Photography, Bolte Lange in Zurich, Switzerland, and Foam Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam, which holds his work in their collection. His work is also held in collection at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. He was the 2014 recipient of the Paul Huf Award from Foam Fotografiemuseum and the 2006 recipient of the Ward Cheney Award from Yale University. Daniel lives and works in New York.