Daniel Murtagh
Photographer
Manhattan, New York 

I was first taught Photography officially At Pratt Institute In Brooklyn New York, beginning in 1985, But I had long before been taught to see more deeply into images by my older brother who collected photographs and tin-types and would point out all that the photograph was and what made it beautiful. It was old films that awoke me to shadow and light and its artful uses. Paintings by Lepage, Goya, Rosetti, Schiele and Vermeer gave me a sense of composition and an education in light, and the idea that one image, a portrait no less, must represent something besides the subject matter. That an emotion rich with meaning was waiting somewhere in the dance between light and shadow and texture and facial expression and form.In 1986 I visited Paris for the first time and spent months shooting. I felt something happen in me, something about myself could bind it into a complete vision. This vision was to coalesce In New mexico where I lived for two years. I then moved to San Francisco where I spent the next 7 years building my body of work. It was a very prolific period for me. I found the subjects for my photographs simply by approaching people directly. Commercial photography beckoned too, and by 1997 I was beginning to get editorial magazine work and started to have shows, mostly in cafes. I love the idea of my work hanging where people can sit and drink coffee or wine and quietly soak the work in. For me there was no question that I would return to New York and after living bi-coastally for three years shooting freelance and working on projects for Urban Data Solutions, who hired me to shoot architecture and allowed me to travel frequently to California, I settled back in NYC in 2002.

In 2003 I made my first film, and by the fall of 2005 I had made five. Recently I shot my first music video, and having scored all of my own films in some way they are all musical as well as visual experiences. Again I cast the film, as in the photographs, mostly with women. For me there is an ideal balance found by expressing emotion and sensuality with woman as protagonist, a face that looks out from some aspect of human experience I can never really know, the unknowable part of myself mirrored in the ideal of nature and love and the need to connect with the other. The emotions expressed are rooted in time. Time that has long gone, time that may one day come to arrive in the form of memory. I love the idea that I can create a past that never was in the eyes of a person I will never know. A suspended world locked in every person, the essence of sensuality.

I have exhibited my work in galleries in Manhattan, Westport, CT, Portland Or, Albuquerque, NM, and have a permanent home for my work here at Framework, Saratoga Springs, NY. My work has been published on 14 bookjackets, in Elle, American photographer, San Francisco, Mens Journal, Health, Soma and Hippocrates magazines. I am currently doing the film score for an independant feature film, and continue to shoot regularly. Silver geletin printing is fundamental and for me essential. However, I have made the transition digitally as well as continuing to shoot with film. I have recently been published as a one of the feature photographers in the British premiere issue of Photoicon Magazine. You can check view the 6 page article and see my work in their on-line gallery.

www.danielmurtagh.com