Dan McCormack

GRID  IMAGES  of  NUDES

"In this project, I am working with a cell phone camera to create 3 x 3 GRID images which I photographed in a studio model session to create a relationship in time. 

I began to make multiple images in a grid in 1967, over fifty years ago, while working on my MFA Thesis in Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. There I created different-sized grids. 5 X 5,  8 x 8 and 10 x 10. I created photography organizations based on finding mathematical set theory patterns to fill the grid. At that time, I was aware of an art movement that was interacting art and science. I was intrigued that I was able to use set theory and it worked visually.

I returned to grids in 1992 when I combined 24 images with the Nimslo Camera. The Nimslo created four stereoscopic half-frame 35 mm negatives when the shutter was released. I contact printed two moments in time on a row, then four more moments in time on two more rows, thus 24 frames. My interest was in creating an image in time. There was a feeling of animation in these images.

Later in 1999, I began exploring grids again with the Action Tracker camera. This camera records two images in a moment from a slightly different moment in time. So I combined two slightly different moments in time ( four images ) in a row and then three more rows of related action. The final image had 16 images of a related action.

In this new project I am working with a cell phone camera. In a studio session, I am able to shoot 50 to 100 related images of objects or objects and its shadows with a nude model. It is the spontaneity of working with the cell phone camera that enables a relatedness of any of the images to each other.

I also have to give credit to Lenoir, the model that I am working with, as she is an equal collaborator in the photographing. I suggest an idea and she takes off, and I follow with my camera.”

Dan McCormack studied Photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Next, he earned an MFA in Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He began photographing the nude with Wendy, his wife, while in graduate school. Then for over fifty years,  Dan explored various techniques and processes while photographing the nude as a central theme. 

In 1982, Dan McCormack won a NYSCA-CAPS Photography Fellowship with a series of infrared nude images made of Wendy. With that series, he produced a monograph, "BODY LIGHT-Passages in a Relationship" in 1989. In 1998 Dan began to work with pinhole camera photography. In 2009, he won the Ultimate Eye Foundation's grant for Figurative Photography and had his work featured in an exhibition at the Peninsula Museum of Art in Belmont, CA.

In January 2010, Dan McCormack had a solo show at the Photography Center of the Capitol District in Troy, NY. He showed over fifty images from ten diverse series made from 1990 to 2010. In May 2013, Dan had a solo show at the Barrett Art Center in Poughkeepsie, NY. In this exhibit, he showed 28 images from his "Nude at Home" series. Then in January 2016 he had a solo show of the "Nude at Home" series at the Beacon Artists Union in Beacon, NY and in May of 2016, Dan had another show with newer images of the "Nude at Home" series at the Arts Upstairs Gallery in Phoenicia, NY.

Dan was one of the three founders of the Center for Photography in Woodstock in 1975 and in 1989 he was a founding member of Gallery 3 in Philadelphia, PA.

Dan McCormack has taught Photography at Marist College for over 30 years, and currently serves as the head of the Film Photography program.