aniel Lee is not an expert in evolutionary theory, but he’s got ideas about where we came from. He certainly doesn’t try to pass them off as scientific truth; instead he makes his ideas into anything-but-primitive digital images intended as provocative art. His series titled “Origin” depicts human evolution in 12 pictures, from the fish form (as Coelacanth) eventually transforming to reptiles, apes and humans. It took three photo shoots-using three different cameras-before Lee began working in Photoshop. He started by photographing a dead bluefish he picked up from an Italian market in New York City and finished with a human male model in various crouching and squatting positions. Beginning from stark portraits photographed with a high resolution digital camera, Daniel Lee submits his pictorial subjects to the digital wringer, provoking their unsettling metamorphosis into animal-like forms. He appropriately entitled these series “Manimals”, “Judgement”, “108 Windows”, “Origin” and “Nightlife” initially shown at O.K. Harris Works of Art Gallery in New York since 1993, in addition, these works attracted the attention of publications like PBS Television, BBC News, New York Times, American Photo, Zoom, Wired, Art Life, Harper’s, Creative Technology magazines and gallery and museum exhibitions in France, Italy, England, Japan, Taiwan, Portugal, Canada, Germany, Austria and Australia. Known as Lee Xiaojing in Chinese, born in Chunking, China (1945) and raised in Taiwan. He moved to United States after he received his BFA in painting from College of Chinese Culture. Then he got his MA degree majored in Photography and Film from Philadelphia College of Art and worked as an Art Director in New York until the late seventies, at which point he changed to photography as a career. Within one and a half decades, he went through different stages in fashion, people to still life collage. Since 1993, computer technology allowed him to combine his various drawing, photographic and fine art skills in one medium. More information available at the link below.
www.daniellee.com
