Bill Dane Pictures ...it's not pretty

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DSkjaeve

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In 2015 I went to visit with Bill Dane for the first time. For those who don't know, Bill's work would appear in many different contexts in the '70s and '80s. He had a solo show at MoMA in 1973, was represented by Fraenkel Gallery, was part of the Mirrors and Windows catalog and received two NEA fellowships and two Guggenheim fellowships. Garry Winogrand mentioned him in interviews as one of the interesting contemporary photographers of the time and John Szarkowski lectured on his work. He was perhaps best know for his postcard work. However, he had all but disappeared from the institutions by the mid-90s.

I was curious to learn more about who he was, what he'd done and why he transitioned from the galleries to the internet. Our conversations form the basis for this book and it's the result of nearly five years of work. The book is self-published and printed in an edition of 500 using offset technology in Lithuania.



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ISBN — 978-0-578-66395-1
Pages — 328
Cover — Hardcover
Size — 245mm x 245mm
Price — 60$ / 599 NOK (+shipping)
Payments can be done through VIPPS, Paypal or bank transfer.
For US and international orders - visit https://billdane.com/buy/book
For Norwegian orders - visit https://danskjaeveland.com/bill-dane-book
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"Bill Dane’s work is not easily reducible. No convenient ism appears to explain his artistic trajectory. Dane’s photographs of found images (ephemera, long-gone advertisements, store window displays) root down into the cultural subtext and narratives others have insidiously hidden in plain sight, those images with designs on us. In this sense, and this sense only, Dane is a street photographer.

But content is deeper than form, and his photographs have the subconscious life that well-made paintings do. Part autobiography, part documentary, this book includes a running voice-over by the artist, delivered in a jazzy parataxis that takes us back to the rollicking candor of the Beat poets. It offers us testimony and creed. This fleshes out the work beautifully.

This book offers great insight into the maturation of America throughout a very difficult time period. Miles Davis, who appears in here, blew his shivers through the universe. Bill Dane does too."
William B. Keckler, writer and visual artist.

Containing 222 photographs mixed with 100 texts, this self-published, no-frills monograph shows us the world as seen and experienced through Bill Dane's being.
 
Out to Lunch said:
Interesting. Do you want to promote this book without showing any pictures? For those interested, some pictures here: https://billdane.com/moma-1973 and here: https://billdane.com/ -click on the years to see the pictures. Cheers, OtL
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I've added some pictures to the original post. Thanks for the motivation (I took them today after reading your response). If there are any questions about the book I'd be happy to answer them!
 
Thanks DSkjaeve and Out to Lunch for the interesting links.

It's late here but for sure I'll go tomorow through all of them. Great photographs.
 
For Me, His photos are OK...
Your title for thread: Bill Dane Pictures ...it's not pretty
but who needs pretty ?

Like the book cover, his work is not really Atmospheric, Evocative , or pulls me in
though a GOOD photographer for sure

Thanks for a new name, and seeing other's work
 
We're thrilled Tim Carpenter chose our book as his favorite photobook of 2020 for photo-eye.



"One of the book’s subtitles is “... it’s not pretty,” and I suppose that’s the case because nor is life, but equally true is Szarkowski’s assertion that Dane discovered “a kind of optimism, still available at least to the eye.” Which is why you might call him a photographer’s photographer: affirmative meaning lies in the pictures (in the seeing), and not in anything external to them – a stance not much in vogue these days. The book’s other subtitle is “I’m still in love.” Same here. This kind of thing is the reason why."


https://www.photoeye.com/best-books-2020/details.cfm?FirstName=Tim&Lastname=Carpenter


We also received honorable mentions from Jeff Mermelstein and Mark Steinmetz.
 
Congratulations on the book launch!

Mr. Dane has such a clarity of vision - ideas and form, subjects and composition, tonality and the sense of light are all so remarkably cohesive.

Thanks for notices and all the best with the project.
 
dof said:
Congratulations on the book launch!

Mr. Dane has such a clarity of vision - ideas and form, subjects and composition, tonality and the sense of light are all so remarkably cohesive.

Thanks for notices and all the best with the project.
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Thank you. It was a pleasure to read your comment!
 
Andy Kibber said:
Looks like a fascinating book and clearly a huge amount of effort and thought went into it. Well done.
Andrew
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Thank you Andrew.

Signed copies are now available through photo-eye.

Here are some reactions to the work:

I first saw Bill Dane’s work at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1970s. It impressed me then and continues to do so all these years later. Dane’s work reminds us of something very basic about this medium. At this point, nearly 200 years after photography’s invention, some might assume that it is “safe,” fully understood, with no remaining surprises. With its almost feral energy and intensity, Dane’s work proves otherwise. His photographs are everything at once: simple and mysterious, innocent and cunning, personal and universal, magical and mundane. They have the effect of a kind of cultural strobe light: individual images are jarringly immediate, the sum total both disorienting and revelatory. Dane makes the familiar strange, and the strange familiar. Vision becomes an act of existential, not merely factual, assertion. I see, therefore I am.
Keith F. Davis, Former senior curator of photography, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Five decades in the making, we are finally delivered a worthy book of words and images by the great American iconoclast, Bill Dane. On this wintry day, I raise a warm glass to our playful destroyer of conditioned seeing. There is kindness in his rage.
Mark Steinmetz

Bill Dane will be noticed by the powers that be in the gallery/museum world by many curators and they will wonder how he slipped from their view.
How is it possible that a unique vision such as Dane’s could have been overlooked?
There really is no one at this point who “sees” the way Bill does with an almost tabula rasa innocence which forces the viewer out of the business as usual sleep time and jolts with a fresh view!
Jack Fischer

Bill Dane’s pictures stump me, casting a spell that is enigmatic, bizarre and mysterious.
His penetrating vision has powerfully pushed the snapshot aesthetic into new places
revealing an America we would have not seen otherwise and begin to understand..
Thank you Bill.
Jeff Mermelstein


Its multifaceted form conveys a strong sense of Bill Dane as artist and wonderfully eccentric personality. Dense with information, chaotic, peculiar, and beautiful, the book hews closely to its subject.
Blake Andrews, for Collector Daily

I read, re-read, and re-re-read every word and tried to absorb the pictures…it felt like experiences, words, memories and dreams pulled through my mind-eye with no way to stop it - just organic pulsing resonances with my own experiences…. and then on again….
Gus Kayafas

I recall hearing about Bill Dane in the 1970s - the photographer who sent his images free to a number of people whose judgement he admired. It seemed somewhat unusual, rather Hippy: now it is what many of us do on Instagram. I see Bill's gesture as belonging to that valuable thing, Gift culture. Later I saw his photographs in magazines and exhibitions and - forty years later - find I never forgot them: images with real poetic content in which we have to invest our minds and feelings.
Finally, this wonderful new book shows that Bill prompted the great John Szarkowski to write some of his very best sentences.
Mark Haworth-Booth, Former senior curator of photography at Victoria & Albert Museum
 
I’m happy to see this book getting noticed. It makes sense for Tim Carpenter to choose it, but the others... I don’t think you (I) could’ve predicted that. :) I’d love to own it but $60 shipping on a $60 book just kills it for me...I think. It depends on how you ship it... since $120 could mean I pay customs fees on top. Sigh.
 
jsrockit said:
I’m happy to see this book getting noticed. It makes sense for Tim Carpenter to choose it, but the others... I don’t think you (I) could’ve predicted that. :) I’d love to own it but $60 shipping on a $60 book just kills it for me...I think. It depends on how you ship it... since $120 could mean I pay customs fees on top. Sigh.
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Yeah, shipping costs has been a problem with this 2+ kg book. I do have unsigned copies at my place, and when budget prevents someone from getting the book (outside the U.S.) I try to help out by covering some of the shipping costs. Let me know through a message if this could be of interest.
 
DSkjaeve said:
Yeah, shipping costs has been a problem with this 2+ kg book. I do have unsigned copies at my place, and when budget prevents someone from getting the book (outside the U.S.) I try to help out by covering some of the shipping costs. Let me know through a message if this could be of interest.
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Ok, I have PM'd you.
 
Some new updates for those interested.

C4 Journal / Karin Bareman recently review the book.

Photographer Alex Prior (@photobook_reviewer) did the same on his instagram.

There is a surreal undercurrent, an absurdist bent and a wry humour throughout and remaining remarkably consistent over the course of 50 years. This photographer has observed the world change in innumerable and vast ways yet still maintained a roving and seemingly untainted eye. This is observation and understanding of the power to see, react and consume a moment as an art form, each fragment an individual performance.⁣
Alex Prior
 
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