About the Artist
Adam Davies is an award-winning photographer whose large-format film photography explores architecture, social systems, and public spaces. Said David Tomkins, Writer/Editor of The Chinati Foundation, Marfa: ‘There’s an enigmatic quality to Davies’ images, and to the places they depict. The pictures bear a trace of something a bit uncanny, because the places they depict are quietly but insistently someplace else-or at least the threshold to someplace else . . . maybe a little magical, maybe a little cursed’. Adam is a recipient of grants from the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the Vira Heinz Endowment, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and has attended residencies at Chinati Foundation, Creative Alliance, Fine Arts Work Center, and Yaddo. He has worked as a Lecturer & Media Specialist at the National Gallery of Art, Washington and taught at Carnegie Mellon, Catholic, Robert Morris, and Harvard Universities. In 2015, Adam was named as Outstanding Emerging Artist at the DC Mayor’s Arts Awards and was the recipient of the Clarence John Laughlin Award. Between 2016–19, he was an artist-in-residence at Creative Alliance in Baltimore where his 2018 exhibition featured collaborations with Los Angeles-based musician Alex Zhang Hungtai and Chicago-based percussionist Adam Rosenblatt. In 2019 he presented his project, Reroutings, at the Mid-Atlantic TED Talk in Washington, DC.Artist's Statement
I have long been fascinated by the issue of human engagement with the natural and built environment. This subject, how we experience our surroundings and, in turn, how we affect them, is of critical importance to my work. By representing the possibilities of a hybrid landscape – in which buildings and the surrounding environment are fused – the photographs offer a different perspective on architecture, one that downplays a heroic conquest of nature and looks instead for modes of coexistence with it.Featured Work
Photos
Featured Work: Photos
Indian Creek, Maryland
archival pigment print (photograph)
2015
Falls Road, Baltimore [Seven heads]
archival pigment print (photograph)
2018
Bloomfield Bridge, Pittsburgh [Paintballs]
archival pigment print (photograph)
2017
Loch Raven Boulevard, Baltimore [Two faces]
archival pigment print (photograph)
2018
Interstate 68, Maryland
archival pigment print (photograph)
2017
Documentation of 'Reroutings,' a solo show at Creative Alliance, Baltimore
2018
This exhibition represented a culmination of more than two years of research and development, including custom designed lighting and prints of large-scale 5 by 6 foot photographs. The Creative Alliance’s 2000 sq. foot gallery was transformed into a black box space: it was darkened, the walls were painted black, and spot lights were trained on the individual photographs, giving the impression that they were illuminated from behind. The effect was to create a transformative space within the gallery that encouraged close looking. Because many of the photographs had been taken locally, this in turn, developed a sense of intimacy and community. Musicians Alex Zhang Hungtai and Adam Rosenblatt performed collaborative works during the exhibition.