Seeing the Unseen Landscape

In this talk, Dan Bailey considers human scale, perception, and natural landscape, which are central to his current work on long-duration photography of landscapes and a reconstruction of Baltimore’s geographic past. Seemingly disparate, his two projects, Slow Exposure and Early Baltimore, encourage us to examine the meanings of viewpoint – focused versus fuzzy – and how the “long view” can be used to augment “thinly-sliced” data. In Slow Exposure, Bailey attempts to slow down the process of landscape photography with one goal being to simulate shutter speeds measured in centuries, not seconds. In Early Baltimore, he re-creates the 3D landscape of Baltimore, circa 1820, for use in public history programs and as a tool for scholars.

Bio: Dan Bailey is a Professor of Visual Arts at UMBC and the 2018-19 Lipitz Professor. His teaching and research encompass the fields of animation, interactive media, and time-based media. Bailey’s films and animations have received numerous national and international awards and have been included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, France. During a Windgrove residency in Tasmania, Australia in 2017, he initiated research on long-duration photography of landscapes, which is part of his ongoing project, Slow Exposure. While director of the UMBC Imaging Research Center for 17 years, Bailey developed a fully digital model of Baltimore City in the early nineteenth century. Early Baltimore uses contemporary GIS techniques to re-create lost terrains and landscapes. Both projects are part of his Lipitz award work.

UMBC is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive environment for all faculty, staff, students, and visitors. If you would like to request accommodations (e.g., ASL interpreters, captioning, wheelchair access, etc.) for this event due to a disability, please notify us at least two weeks prior to the event. Requests received after that time cannot be guaranteed, but we will do our best to make arrangements for program access. Please contact us at dreshercenter@umbc.edu with your specific request and be sure to include the event title, date, and time.