Dan Meath

10010001, 2020, archival pigment print, 36" x 24"

2020 Senior Exhibition Artists

Dan Meath

Art + Design: Photography

Biography

Dan Meath received his 2020 BFA in Photography at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Though having a natural inclination toward fashion photography, Dan has explored more conceptual ideas in his most recent works. Through his photographs Dan strives to present his viewers with abstract imagery and thought-provoking concepts. His use of color and the serenity of his images draw the viewer in and allow them to get lost in his photographs. The viewer is led to ponder about what they are looking at and through whose or what perspective is guiding them.

01011110, 2020, archival pigment print, 36" x 24"

Statement

I’m imagining a (not so) distant dystopia where the environment has been so destroyed that humans cannot experience it in person or in real time. The government, billionaires and corporations have exploited human desire to view the sky, moon and stars and all manner of phenomena therein. There is now a fee charged for the experience of seeing recreations of it through screens and technological advances.

I’m using these photos of the sky through a screen to create a false reality. I also want to explore the concept of what the sky is to humanity, whether that is a feeling of wonder, loneliness, or a feeling of comfort knowing that there is something bigger than ourselves.

Contrasting the actual experience of looking at the sky with photography of the sky brings attention to the general perception of what is photographic truth and also having the viewer question what they’re seeing. We experience much of our perceptions of reality through screens, it has become normal to us. What if that was all we had to view the environment in general and the sky in particular?

I strive for ambiguity within the images, and to present questions to the viewer, who may be unaware of their context. I want the viewer to have to figure out that these are photographs of the sky, but with an odd atmosphere to them, similar to Vik Muniz’s MoMa, a response to AlfredStieglitz’s Equivalents, which are photos of the floor in MoMa in front of the exhibition of Stieglitz’s photos of actual clouds.

I am intrigued by the way we have long been influenced by the sky, from feeling happy because of sunsets, to feeling gloomy because of a cloudy day. Humans also have a history relate the sky to “the unknown”, from blaming storms on a higher being, to even placing the higher being in the sky.

This has been explored by Penelope Umbrico in her Suns from Sunsets from Flikr, a collection of found images of sunsets that she cropped in on the sun. She has also explored the connection between the sky and technology in Sun/Screen, a film of images of the sun being played on a screen.