Dan Estabrook: Wunderkammer

Event Details

The work of Dan Estabrook oscillates between image and object and back again. Using antiquated forms of photography, such as salt prints and tintypes, Estabrook examines the objecthood of photography and its ability to represent the truth. He often combines multiple tintypes or adds metal to his images, further commenting on photography’s connection to reality. His sculptural works become recreations of his photos, further blurring the line between image and object. Interested in the studio as a site for fabrication, Estabrook’s sleight of hand in creating still life tableaus asks viewers to reconsider why things appear as they seem.

Dan Estabrook was born and raised in Boston, where he studied art at city schools and the Museum of Fine Arts. He discovered photography in his teens through the underground magazines of the punk-rock and skateboarding cultures of the 1980s. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he began studying alternative photographic processes with Christopher James. In 1993, after receiving an MFA from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Estabrook continued working and teaching in Illinois, Boston, and Florida, eventually settling in Brooklyn, New York.

Estabrook has continued to make contemporary art using the photographic techniques and processes of the nineteenth century, with forays into sculpture, painting, drawing, and other works on paper. He has exhibited widely and has received several awards, including an Artist’s Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts in 1994. A documentary on Estabrook and his work was produced in 2009 for Anthropy Arts’ Photographers Series. He is represented by the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago.

The Halsey Institute is free admission and open to the public. The galleries are open 11:00 am - 4:00 pm Monday - Saturday, and until 7:00 pm on Thursdays.