Urbanautica

DAN SKJÆVELAND. CHASING BILL

by Steve Bisson

«Perhaps if today we exchange photographic prints at a distance without necessarily going through galleries, quotations, increases, and other devilries of the art market, it is also thanks to this possibility of imagination that the avant-gardes have transmitted. Bill Dane proves in unsuspecting times that he understood that we would end up replacing reality with its projection. He had caught the "spectaculative" drift of the world in art, in communication, in politics, and thus in image-making.»

© Bill Dane, 1964 painting after Conrad's "Victory"

Dan Skiæveland is a photographer living in Norway. Its history is emblematic, and it is truly worth telling. So I took the trouble to interview him. Well, let's say that it all starts at the turn of 2012-2013. Dan was driven by a deep passion for the Seventies' photographers and studying the season in every possible way. One day, on Flickr, he ends up on an image of a postcard that featured a comment by Bill Dane. Intrigued by the picture, he clicks on the profile, and what he discovers is an entirely different idea of photography—a flash of colors and shapes. He put aside the note and continue the research. But the name begins to pop out more and more often. In an Aperture "Snapshot" volume, an interview with Gary Winograd and so on. Therefore, he begins to wonder who Bill Dane is? Why he had never heard his name before, although he found him grouped with legendary photographers. He decides to explore his website, an archive of images, articles, and more, but still failing to understand what had happened from the mid-nineties to today. Why he sells his photos for $ 99 while his colleagues sold for thousands of euros in galleries and published books?

© Bill Dane, 1970 Painting at Reese Paley Gallery includes photos

© Bill Dane, Early Postcard, 1972

© Bill Dane, 1970 Point Richmond

© Bill Dane, 1974 Hong Kong

© Bill Dane, 1974 Universal City

© Bill Dane, 1974 Mexico City

© Bill Dane, 1976 Giza

© Bill Dane, 1976 Rome

In 2014 he decided to contact him to buy a print. In exchange, he receives two and a catalog. Not only does Bill begin to write to him frequently. A singular correspondence starts between the two. Then in 2015, the municipality where Dan resides makes an art grant available. It seems like a perfect opportunity as Dan has few photographers around and feels the need for more dialogue. So he offers a workshop with Bill Dane in the United States, and the request is approved. Bill is in favor even if at first he doesn't seem to understand Dan's motivation fully. So they end up in San Francisco for five days, at the end of which Dan has 24 hours of recording. On his return, he begins to edit the material and ends up with a 120-page text. He doesn't think about doing anything at first but then feels the need to try and do something to promote Bill's work. Write to some editors, curators, museums, but there weren't many people interested. So he begins to think about making a book of postcards and begins to contact institutions that have the high-quality scan, MOMA, the National Library of France, some Colleges. However, it receives again little attention.
After a year of working, cataloging, and reordering materials, Dan realizes that there may be something worth sharing with other people. Or make a book out of it. He had in mind something pocket-sized and easy to use like "A bigger message. Conversations with David Hockney". Another year goes by before Bill sees a first draft, which does not satisfy him. Something in writing does not fully respect his "slang", and creative language. Bill then decides to start reframing the writing, and this takes another year away. All this testifies in favor of the patient work, the slow embroidering, which is behind the publication's editing. Not everyone would have accepted such a commitment. The correspondence is intense and challenging. Dan gets constant drafts from Bill that he has to fix and reformat every day.

© Bill Dane, 1982 Hollywood

© Bill Dane, 1982 Oakland

© Bill Dane, 1985 Berkeley

© Bill Dane, 1985 Buena Park

© Bill Dane, 1991 Pleasanton

© Bill Dane, 1992 Fremont

When the job came to an end in 2018, Dan returned to San Francisco and stayed at Bill's home for four weeks. They work ten hours a day to finalize every aspect and start producing samples. There is no lack of ideas on what the book's format should be, a continuous arduous but constructive confrontation. Over the next two years, Dan and Bill continue to refine the book, improving the writing that becomes more personal, direct, and less discursive. Meanwhile, Dan continues an informal learning process of bookmaking, printing. Through this experience, I have the impression that Bill has tested Dan and has passed on qualities to him. Above all, perseverance. Eventually, although Dan had an idea early on, he saw it mature and evolved into Bill's importance. Somehow it had to "disappear" from the whole project, and this wasn't an easy choice.

© Bill Dane Pictures …It’s not pretty
50 Years of Photographs I’m still in love

For Dan, Bill is a provocateur, an outsider, a political militant. He is aware of his work to which he has dedicated his life. He worked on writing in a meticulous, almost obsessive way for two years, not leaving out even a word or a nuance. I find such love for one's work fantastic. I wonder what impact all this has had on Dan. He tells me that it has undoubtedly opened him up to observe his surroundings differently. To consider things he previously avoided, such as photographing others' photos, or the use of found materials, and understanding how to act on these. And above all, the insistence on creating something he hasn't seen before, and consequently on abandoning too familiar situations. Bill did this already in the seventies. He took a different path than the great photographers of the time; he tried to do things in his way.

© Bill Dane, 1996 Santa Rosa

© Bill Dane, 1999 San Francisco

© Bill Dane, 2000 San Pablo

© Bill Dane, 2001 San Francisco

© Bill Dane, 2004 San Francisco

© Bill Dane, 2010 San Francisco

© Bill Dane, 2011 Albany

I also wonder if Bill Dane's work exhibited at MOMA in 1973, and which I find conceptually akin to the artistic avant-gardes of the early 1970s that challenged the definition of art, has received sufficient recognition. According to Dan, no. Artists like Richard Prince, known for his subpoenas for questionable appropriation, have gotten more attention. And although Dane had started taking photographs of photographs earlier. I wonder how maybe it is Bill who has consciously rejected the system or vice versa. Not participating in certain games, not traditionally promoting himself, but posting all his work online, using Flickr as an ordinary user.

© Bill Dane, 2012 San Francisco

I read what John Szarkowski said in 1977 during the Evening Lecture at Wellesley College, and I copy a piece that I consider significant for the reader's convenience. «I would like now to show you examples (slides) from three bodies of work, very different in their motivation and appearance. I’ll ask you to judge for yourselves whether or not their content is separable from their aspect. I will show you a group of classical newspaper photograph (Weegee), some pictures by the great French photographer, Eugene Atget, and some recent photo postcards by a young American photographer named Bill Dane. Four or five years ago, a young California painter named Bill Dane discovered photography and set out to practice it with enormous enthusiasm and generosity. The generosity expressed itself in the form of a massive barrage of photographic postcards which he sent without obligation and, I suspect, often without acknowledgment, to what would seem to be an enormous mailing list. This is not the manner in which artists have traditionally subsidized their public so it is perhaps not surprising that when a few critics did begin to take cognizance of Dane’s work, they tended to be more interested in the fact of the postcards than in the pictures that they carried. But the real reason that I like Dane’s postcards is the fact that they have, I think, beautiful pictures on them, pictures that define new subjects.»

I would say the analysis is clear enough. As in the seventies Bill Dane sent his art by post, today it is uploaded to Flickr, the support and technologies have changed, the principle and message remain consistent. The funny thing is that Bill includes this text along with other quotes from "speculators"...

I am happy to have hinted at Bill's work through Dan's. I found his work precious and generous and this union positive. I found it strange that we had to wait for a young photographer from Norway to browse a retrospective of the work of a great "outsider" of American art. I feel great sympathy for Mail Art, Fluxus, and previous attempts to de-dramatize art and make it accessible, emphasizing the process and not just the final product. It was about bringing art back into motion, making it "viable" and collectivizing. Perhaps if today we exchange photographic prints at a distance without necessarily going through galleries, quotations, increases, and other devilries of the art market, it is also thanks to this possibility of imagination that the avant-gardes have transmitted. Bill Dane proves in unsuspecting times that he understood that we would end up replacing reality with its projection. He had caught the "spectaculative" drift of the world in art, in communication, in politics, and thus in image-making. Chapeau Mr. Dane!!! And thank you Dan for your thoughtful and humble words on our conversation and insightful vision.

LINKS
Dan Skjæveland (website)
Bill Dane (website)
Bill Dane Pictures … (Book)

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