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
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
“It seems to me that the subject of Bill Dane’s pictures is the discovery of lyric beauty in Oakland, or the discovery of surprise and delight in what we had been told was a wasteland of boredom, the discovery of classical measure in the heart of God’s own junkyard, the discovery of a kind of optimism, still available at least to the eye.” John Szarkowski, director of photography, Museum of Modern art 1962-1991
I received Bill Dane’s wonderful book, Bill Dane Pictures …it’s not pretty. 50 Years of Photographs I’m still in love, in the mail today.
For those unfamiliar with his work, Dane has been actively photographing the world around him for over 50 years. Since 1969 he has generously mailed 69,000 of his photographs as postcards to people. More recently he has been active on Flickr where he continues day in and day out to share his world with the rest of us.
Yesterday he shared a diner scene from Tracy, California in 1970, earlier today he shared a bit more abstract flower from Oakland in 2011.
As you work through his flickstream you find yourself moving from Las Vegas in 1972 to Mexico City in 1974 to Olympia, Washington in 2018. The one constant thing is that Bill is there with his camera walking you through his unique view of the world. His view of the world, as his book title admits, is not always pretty, but it is like no other photographer you’ve probably ever seen. It’s not easy work to get through but it’s rewarding when you do.
Accompanying his images in the book are his own sttaccato like typed words. Like a beat poet Bill opines on his own photographic path as well what he sees around him — words to go with the pictures. It’s part personal history/biography, part documentary, part politics, part life vision — always poetic.
“Hunt treasure strike-snap-gather edit judge
I still photograph like it’s 1969 sort of
Advancing weaving focused scanning dam Bill hold still
Leica Rangerfinders straightforward refinement guess settings real good
Film has wonder dept forging Tri-X darkrooms mail
Costco for color prints to edit send
2007 My last film camera Contax SLR zoom-macro
Digital Nikon D80 with the 28-105 macro”
In my own artist’s statement, I quote the great Charles Bukowski who once said that endurance is more important than truth. As far as endurance goes Bill’s got it. He’s got it in spades and you have to admire that. Bill’s spent time hanging out at workshops with Friedlander and Arbus. He’s had shows at MoMA, his photographs hang in the permanent collections of MoMA, SFMOMA, the Art Institute of Chicago — and yet here he is day in and day out still putting work up out there for the public where? At Flickr? Yes, at our beloved Flickr.
Interestingly enough the title of Bill’s book actually comes from Bukowski’s poem “I Met A Genius.” The poem is about a 6 year old boy on a train ride with Bukowski who sees the sea for the first time and remarks upon seeing it that “it’s not pretty.” It’s the sort of innocent honest insight that can come from a child who has not been saddled down with society’s version of the sea as a remarkable and beautiful scene, the way most artists might present it.
Bill gives us a messy world, it’s not always pretty, but it’s worthwhile to see it as he shares it. It is a bit of a junkyard as Szarkowski suggests, but there is beauty in the junkyard as well.
Weighing in at over 300 pages of high quality printing and limited to only 500 copies, do yourself a favor and pick this one up before it sells out and before one of these big name museums decides to do a retrospective. You’ll have an original collector’s item. Bill Dane is a treasure — and so are his flickrstream and book.
Thomas Hawk
For several years now, I’ve been jonesing for someone to put together a proper catalog of Bill Dane’s strange and wonderful photographs. That someone turned out to be the man himself (with the help of Dan Skjæveland), which is a real treat because this book is just as wild and unruly and generous as the pictures it contains.
Tim Carpenter, Selected as one of the Best Books of 2020 for photo-eye
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 is one of a minuscule number of photographers to have had a solo show at MOMA (1973). Dane was a huge part of the postcard art scene starting back in the sixties and estimates he mailed over 69,000 photographic postcards. He's always called himself a street photographer, but I would call him a street photographer with a strong metaphysical bent. He loved crafting images of images, early on, often ephemera and cultural detritus that would soon disappear, reframing these strange visual narratives that sought to sell us something or sell us on something. I'm fairly certain he did this before that became a vogue with artists like Richard Prince. In other words, he was early in on the postmodern shift.
Dane has been an advocate for the oppressed for the entirety of his career. This book includes text written by the photographer that documents that struggle year by year. And you get to meet many of his celebrated colleagues along the way.
I first met Dane a number of years ago and have appreciated his art and friendship equally since then. I'm happy to have been able to contribute some words on Bill's important art to this book. And I'm happy to have exhibited my artwork alongside his, thanks to his generosity and friendship.
I'll defer to Blake Andrews writing in Collector Daily for a better description of the contents of the book.
William B. Keckler
Reintroducing a star from yesteryear is a complicated task. Where does one start? …it’s not pretty tackles everything in one fell swoop. This huge volume includes a quick primer on Dane’s early monochrome years, a selective chronology of highlights since, free-form diaristic chunks of Dane’s life story, and bits and pieces from the art world, showcasing critical reactions and commentary. Such a multitask is probably beyond the scope of any single title, but this one succeeds on a certain level. 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 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
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
“222 photograph-pages and 100 text-pages, this self-published Book shows us a world via my good doctor William Thacher Bill Dane.”
Anon