Binh Danh: Yosemite

Binh Danh: Yosemite

Photographer, artist, and college professor Binh Danh was born in a fishing town in Vietnam in 1977. He escaped the country with his family on a boat in 1979 and was placed in a refugee camp in Malaysia. Eventually, the Danh family immigrated to the United States and settled in San Jose, California. Themes of mortality, memory, and spirituality are a lifelong inspiration for Danh and a primary influence on his artistic development. Danh is known for his innovative approach to alternative photography processes.

Ansel Adams' seminal black-and-white photographs of Yosemite National Park fascinated Danh when he was growing up. He revisited many of Adam’s sites to photograph the same terrain, but instead of film, he used light-sensitive silver plates to create daguerreotypes, from which he created the archival-pigmented prints on exhibition. Danh is interested in how daguerreotypes "reflect" us in the idyllic environs of this national landmark, making a connection between us, the nation of immigrants, and their new homeland.

Binh Danh's art is held in the permanent collections of the Taubman Museum of Art, Corcoran Art Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the George Eastman House, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery of Art. He received his MFA in studio art from Stanford University in 2004. In 2013, he was a featured artist at the 18th Biennale of Sydney in Australia. He currently lives in Tempe, Arizona, where he is assistant professor of art at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, Arizona State University.

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