Artist Statement:
In filmmaking, the purpose of an “establishing shot” is to provide the viewer a frame of reference that leads them into the story that’s about to unfold in the video; for example, the frequent exterior shot of Tom’s Diner in Seinfeld establishes where the next interior scene was going to take place. It’s my hope that these pedestrian photographs of Saint John will lead viewers to think of their own stories, fictional or factual, but always set in Saint John.
It’s important to me that a tradition of photographs as historical documents continues, so I compose photographs from the real world, without any artificial direction, staging, or compromising digital manipulation. I’m interested in using spaces and situations that viewers might not otherwise recognize as being photogenic, or that they may not have ever noticed at all.
Biography:
Dan Culberson is a photographer who lives in west Saint John. He has been making photographs in fits and spurts for most of his life. His first solo show was in 2012 at the former Cooling Rack Gallery in Saint John. He was also part of a group exhibition of music photographers from the east coast in 2007 at Owens Art Gallery in Sackville, New Brunswick.