DANIEL GRANT PHOTOGRAPHY

In the photographic series My Affair with Diana, Daniel Grant captures compelling vignettes of women using a Diana: a mid-century plastic camera embraced by contemporary artists for its simplicity of use, expressive results, and iconic square format. He used the same camera while traveling through the United States, Mexico, and Europe and found the photographs it produced favorably unpredictable: alternately crisp, then unfocused; moody, then stunning. These qualities prompted his use of the Diana for this photographic essay on the female form and the symbolic embodiment of the feminine as muse. The bodies he photographs morph from shadowed to brilliant, hard-edged to soft, as the arbitrary focus and pinhole vignettes characteristic of the camera lend at one moment a dramatic chiaroscuro and at another a dreamlike pictorialism. Equating the Diana with a lover, the series title hints at the shifting landscape of intimacy ― and implies that the greatest love affairs are those between artists and their work. SFMOMA Artist Gallery

Raised on the beaches of Southern California, where the ocean and surfing were a way of life and everything seemed to be tied to its ebb and flow. On my first surf trip outside of the US, I recognized that this lifestyle was not just unique to California, in fact, it was international, crossing language barriers, religious affiliations and political ideologies. At the root of this is phenomenon is an unquestioned feeling that is inherent to those who venture to the place where the land ends and the ocean begins. Culture is said to be the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group. The languages may be different around the world, but there is still the common denominator of surf. This series was honored to be a semifinalist for the Dorthea Lang + Paul Taylor prize for Documentary Studies at Duke University.

There is this: the silence of the hills at dusk and over-ripe persimmons hanging on at the end of a long season. I saw this photograph and wondered at the tenacity of nature. And human beings. How we survive all sorts of conditions and relationships. And how time shapes us and leaves us alone at the end.

            I saw this photograph and wondered about the rest. About a pilgrimage to an unknown place. A wound healed. A knot untied. A season ended. A story told.

            Give me this: one son and one father and a distance vaster than the green rolling hills of Napa and Sonoma. And there was a story there, in the earth beneath the images: a dying father and an estranged son and the miles traveled to reconcile a lost relationship.

            It’s in the soft rises and the dark trees and the glowing fields. The photographs are the evidence of the journey made.

            I chose Daniel Grant for this exhibition because of his exquisite and appropriate use of the Diana camera. The soft focus and timeless quality is the perfect tool to reclaim his past and also to document the passing landscape as he traveled to and from his ailing father. I also see many landscapes cross my desk at the gallery and so many imitate the traditions of the great California photographers: grand and majestic views printed in black and white. Daniel’s soft color images are intimate and quiet and remind me of when the birds fall silent at the end of the day.

Statement for the 10x10x10 invitation Exhibition at San Francisco City Hall from Ann Jastrab, Gallery Director with Rayko Photography Gallery, San Francisco