Dana Smith
We are so very pleased to feature the works of Dana Smith. Photog, Artist, Illustrator and Educator, Dana has an extensive background in camera based arts. I have known of Dana’s works for some time mostly familiar with his startling, dynamic portraits. I found his new project in photo illustration recently and was immediately interested in them. These works seemed to me to be a response to the portfolios that I’d been familiar with. A calculated yet nearly chaotic response to perhaps a need to move outside of shooting to create. To cull and select to create. To use found and created images to produce a broader story about portraiture, Americana, nostalgia, pop culture. It motivates , asks and has multiple answers. Enjoy these works. I keep coming back to them. -Steven Duede
Desperate for a way to make old portraits new, I wandered aimlessly into the land of ‘cut & paste’.
While illustration is very new to me, visual storytelling isn’t. As a widely published editorial photographer for 25 years I have spent my career solving visual puzzles and building pointed narratives with my pictures.
My trek into photo-illustration was an unintended detour necessitated by the pandemic lockdown. Primarily a people photographer, my subjects were now in seclusion and my clients were frantically rummaging through my image archive. Desperate for a way to make old portraits new I wandered aimlessly into the land of ‘cut & paste’. Since I wasn’t fixated on anything in particular I chose a path that allowed me to indulge in my long-lingering obsession with pop culture, midcentury American graphic design, and one highly addictive K-Mart in-store reel-to-reel tape circa 1973. I also fortuitously stumbled upon a box of long-lost snapshots in my parent's basement that turned out to be the inspiration for a whole new chunk o’ work.
As an editorial photographer I’m usually charged with building a narrative with actual pieces in real-life settings, navigating public perceptions while acknowledging the ‘known’, but as an illustrator I’ve found myself exercising more creative license by framing narratives around ideas imagined, fictitious, and fabricated. As to procuring the visual ingredients to fill these narratives, I found that the old boxes of stuff that have traveled with me over the years---the ones always relegated to either the closet or the attic, brimming with oddments scrupulously saved but never warranting a space of honor, much like guilty-pleasure songs that never find a comfortable slot on any set playlist---have been a treasure trove of vintage bliss.
Although this body of work was produced over the course of a single year it has been 50 years in the making. It draws endlessly on the history, art, music, people, and pop culture that has inspired me over a lifetime. My attempt to accomplish something on a professional level led me to draw from the personal and eventually connect it with the historical. Not exactly my intent but achingly true to my creative process. - Dana Smith 10/2021
Dana Smith
Dana Smith
Boston Based shooter Dana Smith is a widely published magazine artist both nationally and overseas. His works have appeared in publications such as the New York Times Magazine, Time, Bloomberg, Stern Technology Review, Nature and Yankee. He has also worked with many universities over the years including Harvard, Boston College, Brown and Dartmouth. In addition to his vast editorial background he has the daily grind of 10 years of newspaper photojournalism experience behind him. He was affiliated with the legendary Black Star agency for 15 years and an instructor at the New England School of Photography in Boston for 20.