Contact
Dan McCormack
13 Beehive Rd.
Accord, NY 12404
http://ulsterartistsonline.org/user/130
 

Currently head the Photography program at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, teaching photography classes.

I use the extreme wide angle distortions of the round oatmeal box pinhole camera and the digital colorization to create a series of visceral images. Through successive pulling of curves in Photoshop, B&W values are replaced with color. The “Nude at Home” is a subset of a larger pinhole camera project begun in 1998. In this series, begun about three years ago, I photograph the model nude in her home, apartment or studio. With the model in her space, all the objects in the image are a part of the life of the model. Then the pose, the furniture and the long, two minute exposures reveal an intimate portrait of the subject.

I began studying Photography around 1962 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 School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1967, I began photographing the nude with Wendy, my wife, and I began making multiple image prints. Then for over forty years I explored various techniques and processes while photographing the nude as a central theme.

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 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. I make an images rooted in 16th Century pinhole optics juxtaposed with 21st Century digital print manipulations. These newest photographs of mine are a hybrid of Photography and Digital Printmaking.

In 2009, I won the Ultimate Eye Foundation’s grant for Figurative Photography and had my work featured in an exhibition at the Peninsula Museum of Art in Belmont, CA.