DANIEL HUMPHRIES-RUSS

About the Artist

Daniel Humphries-Russ is an award-winning photographer residing in Maryland who has exhibited both locally and regionally. Daniel creates original limited-edition archival pigment prints combining traditional techniques and current digital technology. As a master printmaker, he has produced prints for Fortune 500 companies. Daniel is a faculty member at Towson University and at Carroll Community College. Daniel became a photographer because of a disagreement between Walt Disney and ABC. During his preschool years, his favorite television show was The Mickey Mouse Club. When the show was canceled in September 1959, and it was “time to say goodbye” for good, he was inconsolable. He cried soulful tears of the mortally wounded. To relieve his angst, his mother gave him a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash Model. A photographer was born. Daniel grew up with Life, Look and National Geographic magazines, always trying to figure out how the photographer got their shot. He earned photography from the masters of photography: the Zone System from Ansel Adams, point-of-view from Margaret Bourke-White, and The Decisive Moment from Henri Cartier-Bresson. Aaron Sussman said, “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever . . . it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” Working handheld with available light, he developed a style of composing in the viewfinder and printing the image “full-frame”. Using the high-speed films of the day and seeking the finest grain negatives and sharpest prints possible he developed his own film and produced his own gelatin silver prints to ensure image quality and full tonal range. Daniel began working with digital images in 1994, working with images captured on film and converted to digital files he began the process of “developing” digital images in concert with traditional film images. He committed exclusively to digital processes in 2008. Using high-resolution cameras, fractal resampling and artificial intelligence (AI) enables him to print images as large as 40 x 60 inches. 

Artist's Statement

As a photographer, I seek the extraordinary in ordinary places, for things overlooked, for that which we fail to see in the world around us. I work close to my subjects using available light and wide-angle lenses. I invite the viewer in and encourage them to come close to my photographs. In documenting the commonplace, I seek archetypal American images.