Artist Bio
Daniel Humphries-Russ is an award-winning photographer residing in Maryland who has exhibited both regionally and nationally. Daniel creates original limited-edition archival pigment prints combining traditional techniques and current digital technology. As a master printmaker, he has produced prints for Fortune 500 companies. Daniel is a faculty member at Towson University and at Carroll Community College.
Daniel became a photographer because of a disagreement between Walt Disney and ABC. During his preschool years, his favorite television show was The Mickey Mouse Club. When the show was cancelled in September 1959, and it was “time to say goodbye” for good, he was inconsolable. He cried soulful tears of the mortally wounded. To relieve his angst, his mother gave him a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash Model. A photographer was born.
Daniel grew up with Life, Look and National Geographic magazines, always trying to figure out how the photographer got their shot. He learned photography from the masters of photography: the Zone System from Ansel Adams, point-of-view from Margaret Bourke-White, and The Decisive Moment from Henri Cartier-Bresson. Aaron Sussman said, “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever . . . it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”
Working handheld with available light, he developed a style of composing in the viewfinder and printing the image “full frame”. Using the high-speed films of the day and seeking the finest grain negatives and sharpest prints possible he developed his own film and produced his own gelatin silver prints to ensure image quality and full tonal range. Daniel began working with digital images in 1994, working with images captured on film and converted to digital files he began the process of “developing” digital images in concert with traditional film images. He committed exclusively to digital processes in 2008. Using high resolution cameras, fractal resampling and artificial intelligence (AI) enables him to print images as large as 60 x 80 inches.
Artist Statement
My work elevates the commonplace making our everyday American life extraordinary. Through my work, I seek what we overlook and look for what we see but fail to perceive in the world around us. I seek archetypal American images. I invite the viewer in and encourage them to come close to my work by working close to my subjects.
Daniel has exhibited at:
Maryland Art Place (MAP)
Jonal Gallery, Columbia PA.
Howard County Center for the Arts, Ellicott City MD
Carroll Arts Center, Westminster MD
Washington County Arts Council, Hagerstown MD
The Saville Gallery, Cumberland MD
Rouse Company Foundation Gallery at Howard Community College, Columbia MD
Babylon Great Hall at Carroll Community College, Westminster MD
Langdon Family Gallery at Carroll Community College, Westminster MD
Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, Fulton MD
Penn Alps, Grantsville MD
