Daniel kukla photographer biography books

When I see work that has a fresh take on landscape photography, like that of the talented Daniel Kukla , I want to know more about what the artist in thinking. Landscapes are so vast and varied that they engulf the very frame that one holds to it. As an artist that works with the shifting tensions between humanity and nature, landscapes are integral to my work and prove to be both the most frustrating and inspiring subjects to work with.

For those of us photographers with a background in science, you will appreciate how Daniel explains his connection to both. In both science and photography the act of collection is universal. Daniel was recently selected for The Fountainhead Residency and he will head to Miami later this year to work on a new project looking at the history of the land and early settlements combined with a vision of the future history might look like in South Florida when the effects of climate change begin to take hold.

While staying in the Park, I spent much of my time visiting the borderlands of the park and the areas where the low Sonoran desert meets the high Mojave desert. While hiking and driving, I caught glimpses of the border space created by the meeting of distinct ecosystems in juxtaposition, referred to as the Edge Effect in the ecological sciences.

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Using a single visual plane, this series of images unifies the play of temporal phenomena, contrasts of color and texture, and natural interactions of the environment itself. This series is composed of photographs of the extant Alaskan landscape paired with photo-sculptural pieces representing the nascent landscapes to come. The photo-sculptural pieces were created through manipulating silver gelatin emulsion paper and sculpting it into rough approximations of the existing underwater topography.

Dry chemistry was then applied directly to the emulsion and washed over with water; as the water flows around ridges and through valleys, it simulates trails and pools that are reminiscent of glaciers, glacial melt waters, silt deposits and the new risen muddy tidal flats.