"Yosemite"

HOL-2012-29

C-print (digital)

The photographic work of Dan Holdsworth is a tightrope walk between reality and its deconstruction, objectivity and fiction, the concrete and the unknown. Thus, through an alienating aesthetic, the artist transforms the world in a way that makes mysticism seem possible. Although the pictures suggest a certain familiarity, they never really reveal themselves and are characterized by a certain ambiguity.
The viewer is invited to careful contemplation, which is reflected in the working practice of Dan Holdsworth. In a highly elaborate working process, Dan Holdsworth modulates negatives and long exposure shots. From his large-format negatives, Mr. Holdsworth produces scans to obtain larger image files, which he then uses to create his digital C-prints. In this process, sharpness of detail and new vision work together impressively.
Since 2005, Dan Holdsworth has primarily been referring to distant countries from a central European perspective, creating otherworldly realities that almost seem like science fiction scenes.
In Transmission: New Remote Earth Views, the artist alters topographical data to reinterpret ideologically and politically connoted landscapes of the Western American continent. In his photographs of the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Mount Shasta, Salt Lake City, and Mount St. Helens, one can recognize untouched areas that stray from their original meaning.
Although Dan Holdsworth is concerned with wild or man-made landscapes, the relationship between man and nature is central to his work. As if the world were being viewed from space, transmission evokes the feeling of capturing something never seen before.
Holdsworth's collaboration with the geologist Dr. Stuart Dunning is reminiscent of the old collaboration between cartographer and photographer. The connection between science and culture makes it clear that art and science can go hand in hand.
(Scheublein & Bak AG, 2014)