Artist presentation

Daniel Bellman

Daniel Bellman (b.1977) is an Italian/American artist based in New York City. He holds a BA in Foreign Literatures, and an MA in Film Studies. Discovering a fascination for analog cameras and film at an early age, he started taking pictures in his twenties in his spare time. Over the years, his occasional but constant dedication to photography — mainly practiced on the street — took shape into a spontaneous yet coherent body of work marked by a distinct style born of an innate skill for capturing harmonious compositions, a keen awareness of the subtleties of light, and a narrative quality stemming from a solid background in the art of filmmaking.

www.danimbel.com

@danimbel

Artist statement

I like to think of street photography as something akin to the arcane divining practice of searching water with a dowsing rod. Relying on intuition and fate, the acolyte-photographer roams uncharted grounds with a camera in search of chance events to be imbued with form and meaning in the twinkling of an eye, hoping that the collision of fortuity and intent will deliver a spark of some sort.

In the case of my work, the spark seems to burst from an attempt at evoking the possibility that under the mundane, casual surface of reality there lies a subtle transcendental layer infusing meaning into our existence — an essential aspect of life that tends to be neglected in an era permeated by a distracted and skeptical attitude.