John Dugdale (born 1960 in
Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...
) is an American
art photographer
Fine-art photography is photography created in line with the vision of the photographer as artist, using photography as a medium for creative expression. The goal of fine-art photography is to express an idea, a message, or an emotion. This stand ...
.
Early life and career
Dugdale's interest in photography started at the age of twelve with his first camera, which was a present from his mother. He attended the
School of the Visual Arts
The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.
History
This school was started by ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
where he majored in photography and art history. In 1983 his photographic work was first presented in a solo exhibition at
Vienna
en, Viennese
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, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
's
Molotov Art Gallery. The show and the catalogue were curated by
Christian Michelides
Christian Michelides (born July 19, 1957) is an Austrian psychotherapist. He is the director of Lighthouse Wien.
Life and career
Michelides was born in Graz. In 1973, he started to work as an opera critic of a provincial newspaper called ''Südost ...
, the founder of the gallery. Thereafter he started a successful decade long commercial career working for such clients as
Bergdorf Goodman
Bergdorf Goodman Inc. is a luxury department store based on Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York. The company was founded in 1899 by Herman Bergdorf and was later owned and managed by Edwin Goodman, and later his son, Andrew Goodman.
To ...
,
Martha Stewart
Martha Helen Stewart (, ; born August 3, 1941) is an American retail businesswoman, writer, and television personality. As founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, she gained success through a variety of business ventures, encompassing pub ...
, and
Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren, ( ; ; born October 14, 1939) is an American fashion designer, philanthropist, and billionaire businessman, best known for the Ralph Lauren Corporation, a global multibillion-dollar enterprise. He has become well known for his co ...
.
Blindness
In 1993, at age 33, Dugdale became nearly total blind due to a stroke and
CMV retinitis, an HIV-related illness. He became completely blind in his right eye and lost eighty percent visibility in his left eye. In 2010 he lost his remaining vision.
Blindness ended his successful commercial photography career, but he decided to persist in photography and started to explore techniques from the 19th century for fine art photography, in order to use older, less harsh photochemistry, and enlisting friends and family as assistants.
New use of old photography
Since then Dugdale has worked with large format cameras, creating cyanotype prints – platinum prints – using the
albumen process which became the predominant technique for positive photography from 1855 to the turn of the 20th century. His sensibility for bygone techniques emphasizes the poetics of his work and the transcendence of time and place; seemingly transporting the imagery to a different era. A quote of the nearly blind photographer:
:“The mind is the essence of your sight. It’s really the mind that sees.”
Dugdale has exhibited in over 25 solo shows in galleries all over the world. One of the better known solo exhibits was called ''Lengthening Shadows Before Nightfall'' (1995).
[ His work has been seen in group shows at the ]Miami Art Museum
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at the ...
, at the High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...
in Atlanta and at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum is located in Ridgefield, Connecticut
Ridgefield is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. Situated in the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains, the 300-year-old community had a population o ...
in Ridgefield; his photographs are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
and The Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...
in New York as well as in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Build ...
.[ The artist has been inducted into the ]Royal Photographic Society
The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, commonly known as the Royal Photographic Society (RPS), is one of the world's oldest photographic societies. It was founded in London, England, in 1853 as the Photographic Society of London with ...
in Bath and he spoke on BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, at universities and other public and private events where he continues to discuss 19th century photographic processes as well as his own aesthetic point of view – answering questions pertaining to what it means “to see."
:Dugdale continues to skim the beautiful surface of his deeper concerns – spirituality, death, interior decoration – so his ultra refined Neo-Victorian sensibility and exquisite prints can be quite seductive.
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