The
Photographic Ecstasy: The Photography of Daniel Murtagh by Christopher
John Ball
A
graduate from Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute - New York based photographer
and experimental short filmmaker Daniel Murtagh credits his awakening
to the creative
possibilities of the medium to his brother. He had a passion for collecting
photographs which he shared with Daniel, teaching him “to see
more deeply into images” and pointing out “all that the
photograph was and what made it beautiful.”
Drawing
a sense of composition from artists such as Goya, Rosetti, Schiele
and Vermeer and from cinema “an education in light,” Daniel
became transfixed with the idea “that one image, a portrait
no less, must represent something besides the subject matter,”
and that “an emotion, rich with meaning was waiting somewhere
in the dance between light and shadow and texture and facial expression
and form.”
It
was whilst spending a few months photographing in Paris in 1986 that
the wait ended and Daniel first had an epiphany – a moment where
something within his soul and his eye coalesced. “I felt something
happen in me, something about myself that could bind it into a complete
vision.” There followed a prolific period of image making as
Daniel spent first two years in New Mexico and then seven years in
San Francisco building up a substantial portfolio that, in 1997, caught
the eye of photographer’s agent Polly Smith.
Daniel
began attracting editorial magazine work and felt confident enough
to arrange exhibitions of his imagery. He is particularly attracted
to showing his work in Café galleries. “I love the idea
of my work hanging where people can sit and drink coffee or wine and
quietly soak the work in.”
In 2002 Daniel returned to New York to resettle. “For me there
was no question that I would return to New York.” Here he started
to put into practice what he had learnt from those old movies he watched
as a youth and began to experiment with making films. Between 2003
and 2005 Daniel had made five short movies. This would not have been
a difficult transition as many of Daniel's photographs exhibit a movement
and poetry that remind the viewer of stills plucked from art-house
movies. It is as if he has selected an image from the 24 that make
the cinematic second in his quest to capture that decisive moment.
Just
as he enjoys using female models to create much of his still imagery
- Daniel predominantly casts women in the film roles because “there
is an ideal balance to be
found by expressing emotion and sensuality with woman as protagonist.”
Asked to expand further he explains that he believes that women have
“a face that looks out from some aspect of human experience
I can never really know.” Is this because he is male? Daniel
answers that it is “the unknowable part of myself mirrored in
the ideal of nature and love and the need to connect with the other,
the emotions expressed that are rooted in time.” Not content
to just shoot the movie – this multi talented artist also composes
the musical score for his films. “Recently I shot my first music
video, but having scored all of my own films in some way they are
all musical as well as visual experiences.”
Daniel
delights in playing with the temporal nature of lens based arts creation
as he explores. “A time long gone that may one day come to arrive
in the form of a memory. I love the idea that I can create a past
that never was in the eyes of a person I will never know. A suspended
world locked in every person, the essence of sensuality.” Here
Daniel echoes Roland Barthes famous philosophical exploration of the
photographic image Camera Lucida. Within the pages of this book, Barthes
argues that when looking at the subject depicted within the photographic
image one can “never deny that the thing has been there. There
is a superimposition here: of reality and the past…we must consider
it …as the very essence, the noeme of photography...what I see
has been there, in this place which extends between infinity and the
subject (operator or spectator); it has been there, and yet immediately
separated; it is absolutely, irrefutably present, and yet already
deferred.” It could be argued that Daniel’s images are
an exploration of what Barthes called ‘the photographic ecstasy.’
Bringing
to mind the work of Jeanloup Sieff, Jean-Francois Jonvelle, Imogen
Cunningham and Julia Margaret Cameron – Daniel’s gentle
imagery effectively blends form, light and composition with a perceptive
and revealing sense of intimacy that has attracted publication in
magazines as diverse as Elle, American Photographer, Men’s Journal,
Health, Soma and Hippocrates. His imagery has graced the covers of
some 14 books and has been exhibited on the walls of galleries in
Manhattan, Portland Oregon, Albuquerque, New Mexico and Saratoga Springs
New York.
Daniel
is currently writing the film score for an independent feature film
and continues to shoot regularly using good old analogue film “I
have yet to move to digital. I see no reason to change something so
fundamental and for me essential.” After viewing the results
produced via his current working practice – who would criticise
him for not wanting to change?
Images
(c) Daniel Murtagh
Words (c) Christopher John Ball
A version of this article was first published in PhotoIcon - Volume
2 Issue 1 2007
July 2024 Several books, featuring Christopher John Ball's photographs, are now available through Amazon or click on an image below to purchase via secure payments on lulu.com
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