Bill Dane
Encyclopedia
Bill Dane born William Thacher Dane on November 12, 1938, is a North American
street photographer
best known for pioneering a way to subsidize his public by using photographic postcards
. He has mailed over 50,000 of his pictures as photo-postcards since 1969. As of 2007, Dane's method for making his photographs available shifted from mailing photo-postcards to offering his entire body of work on the internet.
and Art
/Painting
at the University of California, Berkeley
. He graduated with a BA in 1964, and a MA in Art/Painting in 1968. Dane painted for seven years before discovering photography in 1969. He worked with Diane Arbus
and Lee Friedlander
at Hampshire College
in the summer of 1971.
with Guggenheim Fellowship
s in 1973 and 1982. He received Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts
in 1976 and 1977. He used his grants to photograph inside and outside North America. The results of Dane’s explorations have been viewed on his photo-postcards, in exhibitions, catalogs, books, magazines, and over the internet. Unfamiliar Places: A Message From Bill Dane was his seminal exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art
in 1973. While Dane continues as a straight
, still photographer
working in public places, his pictures have evolved dramatically over time.
John Szarkowski
: "It seems to me that the subject of Bill Dane’s pictures is the discovery of lyric beauty in Oakland, or the discovery of surprise and delight in what we had been told was a wasteland of boredom, the discovery of classical measure in the heart of God’s own junkyard, the discovery of a kind of optimism, still available at least to the eye."
Patricia Bosworth
: "In class [Diane Arbus] kept stressing the factual, the literal, the specificity inherent in photography. She loved Bill Dane’s postcard photographs of American landscapes."
Diana Edkins: "The adequacy of meaning lies in what we recognize as the intensity of Dane’s human response."
Ann Swidler: "A strain of American photography since Robert Frank has concerned itself with finding what is centrally American - attempting the great American novel in visual form." "The greatest American stories, like The Deerslayer, Huckleberry Finn, or Moby Dick, were boys’ stories, written for a culture which didn’t want to grow up. Yet in their secret hearts, those stories were about evil and the kind of redemption that might come from confronting its mysteries." "Dane shows us not an exotic heart of darkness, but the American difficulty in dealing with what we cannot understand, own, or control." "Bill Dane's photographs seem to be about foreignness, both here and abroad. But they are really about us as Americans. They ask whether we can learn to love - not because alien worlds accommodate themselves to what we expect, but because we have learned to see even where we cannot understand."
Jeffrey Fraenkel: "'What’s that?' is not an uncommon response for viewers confronting one of Bill Dane’s photographs. This is a curious question, given the fact that Dane approaches the 'real world' with his camera as squarely as Atget, Evans, or Friedlander. He photographs what exists, with no manipulation or fabrication."
Sandra Phillips: "The vision of the world of Bill Dane, both inside and outside America, is often downright funny. But often, it is also a tragic vision. In his photographs are voltages, a disturbing strangeness."
Bill Berkson
: "Dane has cast himself as a surveyor of ceremonies stuck deep in our wishful, ornamental glut, our fuss."
Written on a photo-postcard sent to MoMA in 1972: "Needless to say I'm on the road with none of the flair and esprit of Kerouac or Frank, just plugging away at the edge of historical monumentalia. Hot dog & Whooppeee & Howl."
In an interview in 1991: "Even though most people still don't seem to understand how manipulative photography is - how it changes experience - if it didn't, it wouldn't be so magical. A clue as to why photography is so wonderful is that it does its own thing; it creates a new reality."
Bill Dane's Official Website
Bill Dane's seminal show at MoMA: Unfamiliar Places: A Message From Bill Dane
An Interview with Bill Dane by Elliott Linwood
North American
North American generally refers to an entity, people, group, or attribute of North America, especially of the United States and Canada together.-Culture:*North American English, a collective term used to describe American English and Canadian English...
street photographer
Street photography
Street photography is a type of documentary photography that features subjects in candid situations within public places such as streets, parks, beaches, malls, political conventions and other settings....
best known for pioneering a way to subsidize his public by using photographic postcards
Postcard
A postcard or post card is a rectangular piece of thick paper or thin cardboard intended for writing and mailing without an envelope....
. He has mailed over 50,000 of his pictures as photo-postcards since 1969. As of 2007, Dane's method for making his photographs available shifted from mailing photo-postcards to offering his entire body of work on the internet.
Education
Bill Dane studied Political SciencePolitical science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
and Art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
/Painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. He graduated with a BA in 1964, and a MA in Art/Painting in 1968. Dane painted for seven years before discovering photography in 1969. He worked with Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....
and Lee Friedlander
Lee Friedlander
Lee Friedlander is an American photographer and artist. In the 1960s and 70s, working primarily with 35mm cameras and black and white film, Friedlander evolved an influential and often imitated visual language of urban "social landscape," with many of the photographs including fragments of...
at Hampshire College
Hampshire College
Hampshire College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1965 as an experiment in alternative education, in association with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley: Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and the University of Massachusetts...
in the summer of 1971.
Photographic career
Bill Dane was recognized by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial FoundationJohn Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died April 26, 1922...
with Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
s in 1973 and 1982. He received Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
in 1976 and 1977. He used his grants to photograph inside and outside North America. The results of Dane’s explorations have been viewed on his photo-postcards, in exhibitions, catalogs, books, magazines, and over the internet. Unfamiliar Places: A Message From Bill Dane was his seminal exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
in 1973. While Dane continues as a straight
Straight photography
Pure photography or straight photography refers to photography that attempts to depict a scene as realistically and objectively as permitted by the medium, renouncing the use of manipulation....
, still photographer
Still life photography
Still life photography is the depiction of inanimate subject matter, most typically a small grouping of objects. Still life photography, more so than other types of photography, such as landscape or portraiture, gives the photographer more leeway in the arrangement of design elements within a...
working in public places, his pictures have evolved dramatically over time.
Reactions of notable critics
John Szarkowski
John Szarkowski was a photographer, curator, historian, and critic. From 1962 to 1991 Szarkowski was the Director of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art.-Early life and career:...
: "It seems to me that the subject of Bill Dane’s pictures is the discovery of lyric beauty in Oakland, or the discovery of surprise and delight in what we had been told was a wasteland of boredom, the discovery of classical measure in the heart of God’s own junkyard, the discovery of a kind of optimism, still available at least to the eye."
Patricia Bosworth
Patricia Bosworth is an American journalist and biographer. A former faculty member of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, she has also been an editor, actress and model.-Early life and career:...
: "In class [Diane Arbus] kept stressing the factual, the literal, the specificity inherent in photography. She loved Bill Dane’s postcard photographs of American landscapes."
Bill Berkson
Bill Berkson is an American poet, critic, teacher and sometime curator, who has been active in the art and literary worlds since his early twenties.-Life:Born in New York on August 30, 1939, Bill Berkson grew up on Manhattan’s Upper...
: "Dane has cast himself as a surveyor of ceremonies stuck deep in our wishful, ornamental glut, our fuss."
Quotations by Bill Dane
Further reading
- Dane, Bill: pictures, Katherine Mills: design, Gary Bogus: binding. Little Known, Handmade Book, Bill Dane, Albany, CA, 1983
- Gollonet, Carlos, Coordina. Catalog to accompany the Exhibition, Bill Dane Photographs Outside and Inside America, Diputacion Provencial De Granada, Spain and The Fraenkel Gallery, 1993
- Di Rosa, Rene. Local Color, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1999, words: p.10, words and picture: pp.82–83
- FitzGibbon, John. California A-Z and Return, The Butler Institute, Youngstown, Ohio, 1990, words and picture: p.12
- Graphis Press, Robert Delpire Introduction. Fine Art Photography ‘95, Graphis Publishing, Zurich, Switzerland, 1995, picture: p.79
- Galassi, Peter. Walker Evans & Company, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2000, picture: p.195
- Gomez, Yolanda Romero, Coordina. Exhibit: Bill Dane Photographs Outside and Inside America, Diputacion Provencial De Granada, Spain, 1993
- Green, Jonathan. The Snapshot, New York, Aperture Foundation, 1974, pictures: pp.96–105
- Harris, Melissa, ed. APERTURE, # 124, Collection of Joshua P. Smith, summer 1991, picture: p.32
- Heyman, Therese. Slices of Time: California Landscapes 1860 -1880, 1960-1980, Oakland, Oakland Museum, 1981, picture: p.21
- Munsterberg, Marjorie. Calendar, On Time, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1974, pictures: week of Aug 25
- Noble, Alexandra and Nigel Barley, et al. The Animal in Photography1843-1985, The Photographer's Gallery, London, 1986, picture: p.9
- Osman, Colin and Peter Turner. Creative Camera, Sept. 1976, pictures: pp.308–311
- Phillips, Sandra. Crossing the Frontier: Photographs of the Developing West, 1849 to the Present, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Chronicle Books, San Francisco 1996, picture: plate103
- Phillips, Sandra. Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera Since 1870, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with Yale University Press, 2010, words: p.23, picture: pl.30
- Rubinfien, Leo. Love/Hate Relations, Review of work by Tod PapageorgeTod PapageorgeTod Papageorge is an American art photographer whose career began in the New York City street photography movement of the 1960s.Papageorge started taking photographs in 1962 as an English literature major at the University of New Hampshire....
and Bill Dane, ARTFORUM, NY, Vol. 26 , #10, Summer 1978, words: pp.46–51, pictures: pp. 46,50,51
- Silverman, Ruth. Athletes, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1987, picture: p.123
- Silverman, Ruth. Dog Days, San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1989, picture: week of Aug 8
- Silverman, Ruth. The Dog, San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 2000, picture: p.79
- Silverman, Ruth. San Francisco Observed, San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1986, picture: p.116
- Szarkowski, John. American Landscapes, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1981, picture: p.72
- Szarkowski, John. Mirrors and Windows, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1978, pictures: pp.122–123
- Turner, Peter, ed. American Images: Photography 1945-1980, London, Penguin Books/Barbican Art gallery, 1985, words-picture: p.162
- Velick, Bruce. A Kiss is Just A Kiss, Crown Publishers, N.Y. 1990, picture: p.38