February 2023 AIR: Daniel Hojnacki
We are excited to share the work of our February AIR Daniel Hojnacki
Q & A
Q: Hi Daniel, we’re so excited to have you as our February Artist in Resident! It seems like your process is quite meditative. Can you talk a bit about the traditional approaches you use and the physical experience of making these images.
Recently I have been tethered to the darkroom, using the early printing technique of cliché verre by applying smoke soot to glass from an oil lamp flame. I am drawn to the volatile gentleness of the material, drawing upon the soot with my body and breath. Leaving residues and vestiges of myself upon the glass plate which are then contact printed in a traditional darkroom on silver gelatin paper. I relate the material I use in my work back to the body, the celestial dust within use. The work is very physical, using gestures inspired by painting and meditating on the importance of mark making. I often ask myself where is the importance of a gesture in photography? How can I use my emotional state as a way to generate a photographic image?
Q: Can you share why you are interested in the intersection of mindfulness and astronomy and how that might relate to photography? How do they overlap and how might they contrast?
Readings on mindfulness and celestial bodies inform the material and gestures I bring to my printing techniques and photographs. I have been lucky to live in New Mexico the last 3 years with open dark skies that give me the ability to observe the stars and moon. Using embodied research of my surrounding landscape, I take inspiration from their movements. The endless curious speculation of the cosmic space is poetically tied to my practice. Mindfulness reaffirms my interconnectedness to the exterior world; that I am stardust, that my body waxes and wanes like the moon, and my breath is calming, intrinsically tied to the exterior world. I find comfort and inspiration in these cyclical changes of our mortality. The scientific nature of the photographic medium has always been closely related to that of astronomical observation. The camera and photographic medium can be used as a telescope and a microscope all at the same time. The photograph can obscure our visual understanding of the macro and turn it instantly into the micro.
Q: I found your portrait so captivating. Your gaze looks away from the viewer and you have modern headphones on in what is an untraditional image. How does taking a self portrait transform the experience of your process?
I think alot about how I can create acts of recording my body hovering, or being suspended on the cusps of disappearing.
Q: Does your own art serve as an act of healing for yourself? If so, how?
A quote I think about often before I work in the studio or on a photograph is “Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom” by James Allen. If I can be present and calm in the moment when making, that is a successful day, it is often when I am able to make the best work. I can then embody those feelings into the process, which then become moments of healing and learning.
Q: What is something unexpected that has started inspiring your work? And why?
I really was not expecting writings on science and mindfulness to have such an impact on how I approach my recent work. It may be having such an impact due to my location in the southwest, which offers me locations where I can actually see and experience natural wonders of great time in solitude and quietness.
Daniel Hojnacki
Daniel Hojnacki recently received his M.F.A from the University of New Mexico in May 2022. Hojnacki’s practice uses experimental techniques in photography as a way to be a mindful observer within the world. His work uses material that pushes against traditional approaches to the photographic printmaking process. Daniel is a recent recipient of The Penumbra Work Space Artist In Residence (August 2022) The Patrick Nagatani Photography Scholarship, The Phyllis Muth Arts Award. He has exhibited work at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and The Chicago Cultural Center. Daniel has hosted public workshops and lectures with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Smart Museum of Art. His work has been featured in Phases Magazine, Aint-Bad and Southwest Contemporary Magazine’s fall issue "Inhale/ Exhale”.