ANIMAL INSTINCT: The Photographs of Daniel Lee ~David S. Rubin

A philosopher and humanist at heart, Daniel Lee has held a longtime fascination with human behavior.  In his photographs produced since 1993, Lee has been conducting an ongoing inquiry into questions about what makes us human.  Specifically, he is a keen observer of the many parallels that can be found between us homo sapiens and other species.  Using computer technology and a vivid imagination, he has produced several photographic series that reveal many of the attributes that we share with our animal compatriots. Born in Chunking, China and raised in a Taiwanese army village, Lee studied the fine arts in school and graduated in 1968 with a BFA in painting from the Culture University, Taipei. Two years later, he moved to Philadelphia to study photography, television, and animation at the University of the Arts, where he earned a masters degree in 1972.  In 1973, Lee relocated to New York City to work as a commercial designer and was soon promoted to art director.  By the late 1970s, he had established himself as a leading commercial photographer. Lee’s interests began to shift in the early 1980s, when he moved to New York City’s SoHo neighborhood, which was at that time the epicenter of the contemporary gallery scene.  Invigorated and inspired by much of the conceptual artwork of the day, Lee considered leaving the commercial world for that of the fine arts, a transition that ultimately took him a decade.  Of particular interest were new directions in photography by such artists as Cindy Sherman and Nancy Burson.  Sherman had received considerable acclaim for photographs in which the artist appears in a variety of guises, distinguished by continually changing physiognomy, attire, and settings.  Burson emerged as a pioneer in digital photography who collaborated with software developers to create computer composites such as Three Major Races (1982), in which faces of an Asian, Caucasian, and Black man were mixed digitally and in proportion to the world population of each race to create a single blended image. For Lee, a major turning point occurred in 1992 when he acquired a Macintosh computer and discovered the potential of digital technology for uniting his skills as a fine artist and a photographer.  While still working in the commercial arena, Lee conceived the idea of creating a series of portraits based on the signs of the Chinese zodiac.  According to this belief system, a person may exhibit behavioral and personality traits and even physical characteristics of the animal associated with the year of one’s birth.  For the series Manimals (1993), the artist invited friends and colleagues to sit for portraits, although no one wanted to be shown as a monkey so Lee used his own face for that one, in spite of the fact that the sign does not correspond to his year of birth.  Having mastered the computer program Photoshop for his commercial work, Lee morphed each person’s facial features to resemble their birth year animal by making numerous gradual alterations, literally reshaping a subject’s physiognomy. In 1995, upon being invited by the Chinese government to create a new photography project, Lee turned his attention to Buddhist traditions.  For inspiration, he visited the Han-Sun Temple, which is known for its popular bell ringing ceremony.   On New Year’s Eve and other special occasions, the temple bells are rung 108 times to send blessings to the 108 creatures from the circle of reincarnation in the universe.  According to a popular Chinese Buddhist belief, a reincarnated being can assume one of six different forms:  a human, a fairy, a guardian, a demon, a prisoner of hell, or an animal.   Once again working with friends and colleagues as his subjects, Lee transformed their faces to resemble these reincarnated entities, framing each of 108 faces shown in 108 Windows (1996-2003) as an up-close detail within a circular portal. /

Animal Instinct: The Photographs of Daniel Lee, curated by David S. Rubin, The Brown Foundation Curator of Contemporary Art. Saturday, September 3 to Sunday, February 19, 2012 Focus Gallery, San Antonio Museum of Art

108 WINDOWS 1996-2003, 100x420 cm Archival Print

After completing 108 Windows, Lee felt a desire to broaden the scope of his content, and began work on Origin (1999-2003), a project that reflects his personal belief in the plausibility of Darwinian evolution.  Lee’s concept was to create a series of photographs that would show the gradual transformation from coelacanth, a fish form considered to be the oldest living fossil, to human being.  Initially exhibited as an installation of twelve individual photographs arranged from right to left, the series was eventually brought to life as a slow-moving animation.

NIGHTLIFE 2011, 152.5x548.5 cm, Ink Jet on Vinyl Canvas.

Over the past decade, Lee has continued to develop a variety of settings and situations for his hybrid imagery. Nightlife (2001) came to fruition after he accompanied a commercial client to a bar, which is not his usual habitat. Fascinated by the way the ambience and the consumption of alcohol bring out animal-like behavior in people, he invited friends to pose in the studio.  Working entirely on the computer, he merged the individual portraits and independent shots of a local restaurant to create a large-scale photographic mural.  For the series Harvest (2004), Lee returned to China where he could photograph pigs on a pig farm.  Inspired by readings about new technologies, the decoding of DNA, and stem cell research, the project envisages a time in the future where a breed of livestock provides eyes, hearts, and other organs as replacement parts for the diseased equivalents in humans.  With his most recent series Circus (2010), Lee believes that he has found a perfect subject for combining human and animal characteristics, because circus performers and animals “work together, live together, and act like one another in performance, all to please the audience.” While Lee’s impetus remains primarily objective as he attempts to observe and analyze human nature, his creative approach to such investigations remains playful and provocative, demonstrating how art can function as a visually engaging avenue for developing a better understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.

ORIGIN 1999-2003, 5 minutes DV presentation

CIRCUS 2010-11, 180x500 cm Archival Print

Animal Instinct: The Photographs of Daniel Lee is presented in conjunction with FotoSeptiembreUSA and is made possible with generous support from Jerry Gore, the City of San Antonio Office of Cultural Affairs, Taipei Cultural Center, and Texas Commission on the Arts.

©Daniel Lee, represented by O.K. Harris Works of Art, New York. 212 431 3600/ Nichido Contemporary Art, Tokyo. 3 5501-3203 / East Gallery, Taipei. (02) 2711 9502 / Pata Gallery, Beijing. (10) 6433 5120/ Gallery Now, Seoul. (822) 725 2930/ Tangram Art Center, Shanghai. (21) 6299 9868