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1970
"Bill Dane was born William Thacher Dane in Pasadena, California in 1938. In 1969/1970, after seven years as a painter, Dane took up photography. His pursuit is an effort of harvesting the curious and ordinary from our everyday world. 'If you're not confused, you're not paying attention' is an aphorism that well describes the world of Bill Dane. His pictures are pieces of a simultaneously poignant and synthetic puzzle telling us visual truths about our most uncommon common world. Recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and two National Endowments for the Arts, Dane's work has been internationally exhibited and collected. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art." - Frish Brandt, Fraenkel Gallery
Education
Art Teacher, Berkeley Public Schools, 1966 - 1998
Hampshire College, workshops with Arbus & Friedlander, 1971
University of California, Berkeley, M.A., Painting, 1968
University of California, Berkeley, B.A., Art/Political Science, 1964
Pasadena City College, A.A., 1961
U.S. Army, Language School - Russian, Stationed - Germany, 1957 - 1960
Pasadena High School, Pasadena, CA, 1956
Midland School, Los Olivos, CA, 1955
2008
"A native Californian, street photographer Bill Dane captures everyday odd juxtapositions found primarily in urban environments, as a hybrid form of forensic surrealism, where artifacts and artifice are re-contextualized through camera vision and filtered through the artist's complex perceptions." - Elliott Linwood
Fellowhips
1982 Guggenheim Fellowship
1976 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
1977 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship
1973 Guggenheim Fellowship
1992
"[Bill's pictures] ask whether we can learn to love - not because alien worlds accommodate themselves to what we expect - but because we have learned to see even where we cannot understand." - Ann Swidler
Solo Shows
Bill Dane on the internet.
2008 Four Walls Gallery, San Diego
2008 Garrison Art Center, Garrison, New York
2007 Bill Dane Photographs Outside Inside, billdane.com
2006 Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco
2005 In Color 2, San Francisco
2003 Provincial Museum, Gigon, Spain
1993 Provincial Museum of Granada, Granada, Spain
1992 Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
1989 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
1987 Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah, Salt Lake City
1986 Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
1984 Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
1983 Robert Freidus Gallery, New York
1982 De Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University
1981 Madison Art Center, Madison, Wisconsin
1981 Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
1977 M.H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco
1976 Museum of Art, Washington State University, Pullman
1974 Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson
1974 Oakland Museum, Oakland
1973 Museum of Modern Art, "A Message from Bill Dane" New York
1970 Reese-Palley Gallery, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, SF, CA (All this art burned in a studio fire)
1970
"Just about all the really important awards that can come to a photographer have been Bill Dane's, most of them more than once. A favorite of Diane Arbus, a principal inheritor of the traditions of his friend Garry Winogrand and of Robert Frank, Dane is still mostly unhonored in their and his country - a situation he faces with humor, a staple of his art and personality. Dane's is an epic vision and a comic, and if there is such a genre as epic-comedy then Dane is Prince of it. He is an absolute master of visual contretemps; a sharp awareness of the absurdities of Nature-once-removed (as in dioramas and the like). If, as I am comfortable in prognosticating, historians look back on the last 35 years of our millennium as an unparalleled time of gross self-congratulatory corniness of taste, national bombast, and hapless credulity, Bill Dane will be singled out as a chief recorder. Not the least charm of his procedure is that Bill does it all with a completely straight face." - John FitzGibbon
Group Shows
2011 Tate Modern, SFMoMA, Walker Art Center, "Exposed," Simon Baker & Sandra Phillips
2010 The Getty, "Engaged Observers," Los Angeles
2010 The Getty, "In Focus: Tasteful Pictures," Los Angeles
2008 Museum of Modern Art, New York
2007 Four Walls Gallery, San Diego
2005 Prentice & Paul Sack Collection, SFMoMA
2001 Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
2000 Museum of Modern Art, New York
1997 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
1997 Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
1996 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
1996 Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
1993 Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco
1993 Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, CA
1991 Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco
1991 Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
1990 Oakland Museum
1990 Velick Gallery, San Francisco
1989 Turin International Photography Biennial, Turin, Italy
1986 The Photographer's Gallery, London
1985 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
1985 Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento
1985 Barbican Gallery, London
1984 Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco
1977 The Photographer's Gallery, London
1975 City Art Center, Edinburgh, Scotland
1973 Hofstra Museum, Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York
1954
"Even though most people still don't seem to understand how manipulative photography is - how it changes experience - if it didn't, it wouldn't be so magical. A clue as to why photography is so wonderful is that it does its own thing; it creates a new reality." - Bill Dane
Collections
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth
Art Institute of Chicago
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France
Chase Manhattan Bank, New York
Consolidated Freightways, Palo Alto
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Fogg Museum, Harvard University
Madison Art Center, Madison, Wisconsin
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Oakland Museum, Oakland
Ohio State University Libraries, Columbus
Pamela K. Bonino, San Francisco
Provincial Museum, Grenada, Spain
Rene di Rosa, Napa
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
1947
"I walk into the street to take pictures, looking at everything. I love all kinds of street visions. I'm engaged by all kinds of things - peoples' faces especially. But, it turns out, I can only take pictures of very particular scenes. It's been this way from day one. I'm aware of all kinds of possible subject matter but, it's impossible for me to photograph unless I have the 'possible-picture-connect'. I walk along with my psyche and collected history, scanning-hunting." - Bill Dane
References
Dane, Bill: pictures, Katherine Mills: design, Gary Bogus: binding. Little Known, Handmade Book, Bill Dane, Albany, CA, 1983
Gollonet, Carlos, Coordina. Catalog to accompany the Exhibition, Bill Dane Photographs Outside and Inside America, Diputacion Provencial De Granada, Spain and The Fraenkel Gallery, 1993
Di Rosa, Rene. Local Color, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1999, words: p.10, words and picture: pp.82–83
FitzGibbon, John. California A-Z and Return, The Butler Institute, Youngstown, Ohio, 1990, words and picture: p.12
Graphis Press, Robert Delpire Introduction. Fine Art Photography ‘95, Graphis Publishing, Zurich, Switzerland, 1995, picture: p.79
Galassi, Peter. Walker Evans & Company, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2000, picture: p.195
Gomez, Yolanda Romero, Coordina. Exhibit: Bill Dane Photographs Outside and Inside America, Diputacion Provencial De Granada, Spain, 1993
Green, Jonathan. The Snapshot, New York, Aperture Foundation, 1974, pictures: pp.96–105
Harris, Melissa, ed. APERTURE, # 124, Collection of Joshua P. Smith, summer 1991, picture: p.32
Heyman, Therese. Slices of Time: California Landscapes 1860 -1880, 1960-1980, Oakland, Oakland Museum, 1981, picture: p.21
Munsterberg, Marjorie. Calendar, On Time, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1974, pictures: week of Aug 25
Noble, Alexandra and Nigel Barley, et al. The Animal in Photography1843-1985, The Photographer's Gallery, London, 1986, picture: p.9
Osman, Colin and Peter Turner. Creative Camera, Sept. 1976, pictures: pp.308–311
Phillips, Sandra. Crossing the Frontier: Photographs of the Developing West, 1849 to the Present, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Chronicle Books, San Francisco 1996, picture: plate103
Phillips, Sandra. Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera Since 1870, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with Yale University Press, 2010, words: p.23, picture: pl.30
Rubinfien, Leo. Love/Hate Relations, Review of work by Tod Papageorge and Bill Dane, ARTFORUM, NY, Vol. 26 , #10, Summer 1978, words: pp.46–51, pictures: pp. 46,50,51
Silverman, Ruth. Athletes, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1987, picture: p.123
Silverman, Ruth. Dog Days, San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1989, picture: week of Aug 8
Silverman, Ruth. The Dog, San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 2000, picture: p.79
Silverman, Ruth. San Francisco Observed, San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 1986, picture: p.116
Szarkowski, John. American Landscapes, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1981, picture: p.72
Szarkowski, John. Mirrors and Windows, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1978, pictures: pp.122–123
Turner, Peter, ed. American Images: Photography 1945-1980, London, Penguin Books/Barbican Art gallery, 1985, words-picture: p.162
Velick, Bruce. A Kiss is Just A Kiss, Crown Publishers, N.Y. 1990, picture: p.38
1940
"The first fire left me with a leather jacket, cowboy boots, a black hat and a used camera."
- Bill Dane
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