June, you probably know this but early American portraiture was used the same way as photos. They ranged in size from pieces one could hold in one’s hand to something to hang on the wall. Many itinerant painters traveled around with half done works and would paint in the heads/faces of their subjects when hired.

Also, early America was really into funerary art, a way to remember the people who had passed on.

Are you familiar with Jan Van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Wedding? That’s one of the titles for it anyway. It’s a great portrait of a young couple and it’s believed the artist was a witness to their marriage (he’s seen in the mirror). It’s a fantastic painting. And it wasn’t unusual to use these paintings as a marriage certificate.

“Dan is doing is to connect something of that timelessness to a photographic moment. In this sense, he connects a very characteristic feature of photography with something very different. It is a poetic juxtaposition.”

That’s an interesting thought that I hadn’t had. Does he exhibit the two (his painting of his photograph) together?

And there is something to your other comment about looking at old photographs and looking at old paintings. I never think, when I look at old paintings, about the life that is lost and gone, the child that has grown up and become a prostitute or CEO. But I often wonder about the people in old photos.

As for photos fixing moments in time in unfortunate ways (taking over the real as it were), well, lots of things do that. The stories we tell finally become versions of ourselves and the story becomes all we remember about the time we were lost and got found or “how I met your mother.” Photographs act in the same way, although the narrative is more skimpy.

I wonder if we look at paintings differently today because of photography and its aftermath — that is, after abstract painting became part of our psyches, we tend to view all painting as abstract, not about the boy who drowned or became a traveler to India in 1840. But perhaps earlier folks looked at paintings as we do photographs. Simon Schama says that in 17th century Holland people commissioned paintings in exactly the way we might get family photos done in a studio or high school seniors get their pictures taken — a matter of course in the middle class milieu.

I recall the interview experience clearly and I remember thinking, “I never think about making a mark or immortality when painting” — not that that makes any difference with respect to Dan, of course.

As for “is a creation, which goes on living. The painting defines its own continuing moment in time,” I think Dan is onto a special insight here. Perhaps the point is that a painting is not only about a moment in time, but about painting itself. Imagine an abstract painting, it is not linked to a particular moment. I think the magic of what Dan is doing is to connect something of that timelessness to a photographic moment. In this sense, he connects a very characteristic feature of photography with something very different. It is a poetic juxtaposition.

That’s positive thinking for you. This raises interesting questions of memory. Photographs can trigger memories of moments past that would otherwise be forgotten. One thing that I find disturbing about photographs is the way they take over memory. If I think of past experiences that were recorded in photographs, I find it difficult sometimes to visualize that past without having the photographs popping into my mind.

Sunil,

I don’t think it’s such a subconscious thing. Each painter needs to come to terms with technology.

tend to see photography as keeping moments alive.