Daniel Estabrook

For almost thirty years, Dan Estabrook has been making contemporary art using the photographic techniques and processes of the nineteenth century. By creating his own “found photographs”, he has sought to re-invent the history of photography in his own image, investing seemingly anonymous images with personal symbols and stories. This is not to re-live some idealized past, but to highlight how our understanding of the past is completely subjective, and dependent on the present. As with any look backward, death, transformation, memory, and loss are close at hand, but Estabrook works with a wink and a nod to the fact that every photograph contains a little death. While the photograph may still hang onto its tenuous role as a bearer of truth, elements of sculpture, painting, and drawing are used to pit the hand against the machine, the dream against the daylight.

Estabrook has exhibited widely and has received several awards, including an Artist’s Fellowship from the NEA in 1994. He is also the subject of a documentary film by Anthropy Arts. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

M.F.A., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1993
B.A., magna cum laude, Harvard University, 1990