Forever and Never: Photographs by Dan Estabrook

This exhibition features works by artist Dan Estabrook, who uses 19th-century photographic printing processes and materials to examine history and memory in contemporary images. Adopting a familiar language of the passage of time, he utilizes elements that one identifies with something old and worn—stains, spills, tears, folds, fading, discoloration—to create the appearance of age. In his words, “I want a viewer’s first reaction to be one of wonder. Is this a found photograph? An old thing, lost and rediscovered?”​ 

In an era in which we are constantly bombarded with images, where everyone is a photographer with the click of a smartphone, where images and facts are constantly manipulated and fabricated by artificial intelligence and digital technology, Estabrook creates photographs that are unique objects. Using antiquated photographic processes that rely on the artist’s hand, he questions photography’s ability to “tell the truth” from its very inception.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website