Bill Dane (aka Bill Zulpo-Dane, born William Thacher Dane on November 12, 1938) is a North Americanstreet photographer. Dane pioneered a way to subsidize his public by using photographic postcards.[1][2] He has mailed over 50,000 of his pictures as photo-postcards since 1969.[3][4][5][6][7] As of 2007, Dane's method for making his photographs available shifted from mailing photo-postcards to offering his entire body of work on the internet.[8]
A. D. Coleman: "Now, if I were a photographer myself, I would be deeply Insulted by this show. I would be insulted that an institution so prestigious and powerful as the Museum of Modern Art would present, as photographically exemplary, a collection of random snapshots by someone who has not even established enough craft competence to make his disregard of craft standards a significant esthetic choice."[30]
John Szarkowski: "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."[2]
Patricia Bosworth: "In class [Diane Arbus] kept stressing the factual, the literal, the specificity inherent in photography. She loved Bill Dane’s postcard photographs of American landscapes."[10]
Diana Edkins: "The adequacy of meaning lies in what we recognize as the intensity of Dane’s human response."[7]
Ann Swidler: "A strain of American photography since Robert Frank has concerned itself with finding what is centrally American - attempting the great American novel in visual form." "The greatest American stories, like The Deerslayer, Huckleberry Finn, or Moby Dick, were boys’ stories, written for a culture which didn't want to grow up. Yet in their secret hearts, those stories were about evil and the kind of redemption that might come from confronting its mysteries." "Dane shows us not an exotic heart of darkness, but the American difficulty in dealing with what we cannot understand, own, or control." "Bill Dane's photographs seem to be about foreignness, both here and abroad. But they are really about us as Americans. They ask whether we can learn to love - not because alien worlds accommodate themselves to what we expect, but because we have learned to see even where we cannot understand."[1]
Jeffrey Fraenkel: "'What’s that?' is not an uncommon response for viewers confronting one of Bill Dane’s photographs. This is a curious question, given the fact that Dane approaches the 'real world' with his camera as squarely as Atget, Evans, or Friedlander. He photographs what exists, with no manipulation or fabrication."[31]
Sandra S. Phillips: "The vision of the world of Bill Dane, both inside and outside America, is often downright funny. But often, it is also a tragic vision. In his photographs are voltages, a disturbing strangeness."[32]
Bill Berkson: "Dane has cast himself as a surveyor of ceremonies stuck deep in our wishful, ornamental glut, our fuss."[33]
References
^ abSwidler, Ann. Introduction to: Bill Dane Photographs Outside and Inside America, Diputacion Provencial De Granada, Spain, 1993
^ abcSzarkowski, John - Eugenia Parry Janis and Wendy MacNeil, eds. Photography Within the Humanities, New Hampshire, Addison House, 1977, words: pp.81&85, picture: p.85
^FitzGibbon, John. Death Valley to Phoenix to Santa Fe and the Sangre De Christo, Hope You Like It, Aperture Magazine 94 (Spring 1984), words: pp.22-25, pictures: pp.23-31
^ abBosworth, Patricia. Diane Arbus: A Biography, New York, Knopf, 1984, words: p.304
^Fraenkel, Jeffrey and Eugenia Parry Janis. The Kiss of Apollo: Photography & Sculpture 1845 to the Present, Fraenkel Gallery and Bedford Arts, San Francisco, 1991, words: p.10, picture: pl.34
^[11] The Vanguard: "[...] and a final part where the authors are best represented within the collection, such as Bill Dane ("Outside and inside America")[...]"
^[12] Granada Today: "Since yesterday, the Palace of the Counts of Gabia has exhibited them along with a hundred snapshots made by top-level artists such as Chema Madoz, Bill Dane, Ouka Leele, Manuel Bello and Angeles Agrela. All of them belong to the photographic collection of the provincial institution and are part of the Showroom exhibition [...]"
^Berkson, Bill. ARTFORUM, Review of Bill Dane, 25 # 3, November 1986, words: pp.143-144, picture: p.144
Further reading
Dane, Bill: pictures, Katherine Mills: design, Gary Bogus: binding. Little Known, Handmade Book, Bill Dane, Albany, CA, 1983
Gollonet, Carlos, Coordina. Catalog to accompany the Exhibition, Bill Dane Photographs Outside and Inside America, Diputacion Provencial De Granada, Spain and The Fraenkel Gallery, 1993
Di Rosa, Rene. Local Color, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1999, words: p. 10, words and picture: pp. 82–83
FitzGibbon, John. California A-Z and Return, The Butler Institute, Youngstown, Ohio, 1990, words and picture: p. 12
Graphis Press, Robert Delpire Introduction. Fine Art Photography ‘95, Graphis Publishing, Zurich, Switzerland, 1995, picture: p. 79
Galassi, Peter. Walker Evans & Company, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2000, picture: p. 195
Gomez, Yolanda Romero, Coordina. Exhibit: Bill Dane Photographs Outside and Inside America, Diputacion Provencial De Granada, Spain, 1993
Green, Jonathan. The Snapshot, New York, Aperture Foundation, 1974, pictures: pp. 96–105
Harris, Melissa, ed. APERTURE, # 124, Collection of Joshua P. Smith, summer 1991, picture: p. 32
Heyman, Therese. Slices of Time: California Landscapes 1860 -1880, 1960–1980, Oakland, Oakland Museum, 1981, picture: p. 21
Munsterberg, Marjorie. Calendar, On Time, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1974, pictures: week of Aug 25
Noble, Alexandra and Nigel Barley, et al. The Animal in Photography1843-1985, The Photographer's Gallery, London, 1986, picture: p. 9
Osman, Colin and Peter Turner. Creative Camera, Sept. 1976, pictures: pp. 308–311
Phillips, Sandra. Crossing the Frontier: Photographs of the Developing West, 1849 to the Present, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Chronicle Books, San Francisco 1996, picture: plate103
Phillips, Sandra. Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera Since 1870, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with Yale University Press, 2010, words: p. 23, picture: pl.30
Rubinfien, Leo. Love/Hate Relations, Review of work by Tod Papageorge and Bill Dane, ARTFORUM, NY, Vol. 26, #10, Summer 1978, words: pp. 46–51, pictures: pp. 46,50,51
Silverman, Ruth. Athletes, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1987, picture: p. 123
Silverman, Ruth. Dog Days, San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1989, picture: week of Aug 8
Silverman, Ruth. The Dog, San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 2000, picture: p. 79
Silverman, Ruth. San Francisco Observed, San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1986, picture: p. 116
Szarkowski, John. American Landscapes, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1981, picture: p. 72
Szarkowski, John. Mirrors and Windows, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1978, pictures: pp. 122–123
Turner, Peter, ed. American Images: Photography 1945–1980, London, Penguin Books/Barbican Art gallery, 1985, words-picture: p. 162
Velick, Bruce. A Kiss is Just A Kiss, Crown Publishers, N.Y. 1990, picture: p. 38