Dan Farnum Portfolio

Welcome to my portfolio. This link has four different projects. Each series is labeled with a project title. The work spans several years with the most recent being images from 2023 for Syndicated and 2024 for a new project in Puerto Rico.

This page as well as the one with student examples are private links. At the bottom of each page, there is an option to either revise the application materials page or go to the other portfolio (student or personal). Feel free to explore the rest of my website, but the two portfolio links with my application materials are not part of the overall navigation system.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My artistic practice as a photographer is rooted in exploring the intersections of environment, identity, and societal structures, often through the lens of youth culture and the evolving dynamics of place. My work navigates themes of personal and collective memory, cultural identity, and the ways individuals adapt to or resist broader socio-economic and political systems. Across different projects, I aim to highlight the dualities of fragility and potential, chaos and order, and historical reverence and contemporary tension.

At the heart of my practice is a focus on how environments—whether shaped by economic decline, historical trauma, cultural nostalgia, or infrastructural fragility—influence identity formation and community resilience. In projects like Young Blood and Centennial, I investigate the lives of individuals and communities shaped by historical and economic forces, whether in Michigan’s struggling auto towns or Tulsa’s Greenwood neighborhood. These works grapple with how the past continues to shape the present, from the economic decomposition of industrial landscapes to the lingering scars of racial violence. In both series, I capture the quiet yet poignant realities of life amidst uncertainty, seeking to document both vulnerability and resistance within these environments.

Another thread in my work focuses on how collective cultural narratives mediate individual experiences of youth and place. Syndicated, for example, examines the relationship between pop culture’s idealized depictions of adolescence and the realities of growing up in the spaces used to represent these stories. By photographing actual people in these cinematic locations, I explore the tension between lived experience and constructed expectations, highlighting how culture shapes our understanding of identity and belonging. The project interrogates the interplay between personal autonomy and the influence of media-driven nostalgia in shaping collective memory.

Finally, in Electrificación, my attention shifts to Puerto Rico, where I document the quiet struggles and adaptations of life within a fragile and unjust system. This work moves beyond crisis imagery to explore the long-term effects of unreliable infrastructure and ongoing colonial legacies. Across all my projects, I seek to evoke a sense of place that is both specific and universal, encouraging viewers to consider the complexities of resilience, identity, and agency in environments marked by change and challenge. Through this, my work aims to connect the personal with the political, offering nuanced reflections on the human condition and the spaces people inhabit.

Young Blood, monograph released by Aint-bad, 136 pages, 9.5” x 11”

Young Blood

These photographs investigate children, teenagers, and young adults raised amidst a backdrop of economic decomposition in the neighborhoods of Michigan’s auto towns. Adolescence and early adulthood are characterized by both fragile uncertainty and exciting potential. I see these same characteristics reflected in the rebuilding process of the region.

Ten year project.

Syndicated

Syndicated is a photographic exploration of the everyday lives of kids, teens and young adults in areas that were used in both television shows and movies that depict coming-of-age stories. TV and Hollywood productions form a collective sense of adolescence and nostalgia for many middle-class Americans.

Influential shows and movies such as The Wonder Years established the basis of collective teenage memories. Syndicated as a project questions the authenticity of those depicted experiences, captures actual people existing in these sites, and suggests Hollywood’s impact on our cultural identity.

Ten (or more) year project. Will be edited for a book. Last shooting in summer 2023.

Centennial: Future Land Use Framework

Zine published by Walls Divide Press. The following ten images are from this publication. The images in this series were taken in a historic neighborhood in North Tulsa called Greenwood. The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre occurred in this area and resulted in the burning and destruction of a thirty-five square block area. This is the largest occurrence of racial violence in American history. The neighborhood was rebuilt by the 1940’s, but development for a new highway caused the area to decline again. This area of Tulsa contains a history of dualities related to prosperity and poverty as well as cultural pride and racial violence. There is the potential for rejuvenation in this part of Tulsa, but also the possibility of a literal erasure of the past due to gentrification if it is not documented. I am intentionally mixing photographic genres in this series.

Prints in Centennial often shown as large triptychs.

Fair+, Turnaround Festival installation, each image is 32” x 40”, copy paper and wheat paste

Electrificación

A new and ongoing series in Puerto Rico.

Electrificación is a photography project focuses on the everyday realities of living with an unreliable electrical grid and distressed infrastructure in Puerto Rico after repeated hurricanes. Rather than documenting the dramatic aftermath of storms, these photographs look at the quieter, ongoing ways these disruptions affect daily life as scene through images of the landscape, architecture, power generation and distribution methods, and related daily activities for people that reside in Puerto Rico.