Daniel Shiel: Photographic Artist

About the Artist

Daniel’s photographic work is put into context by his career as an archaeologist. He traces his preoccupations back to childhood holidays in Wales and Cornwall; walking in landscapes scarred by past mining and the ruins of agricultural change. These events have produced palpable sensations that have remained with him as he continues to walk, explore and look. Daniel’s photographic work explores the rich textures and patterns evident in everyday objects both natural and artificial; details often unseen or overlooked at first glance.

The collected images provide the ‘materials’ or ‘pallets’ with which he explores and develops themes associated with the past, absence and decay. He views his work as psycho-geographical adventures into marginal and semi-abandoned areas that lie at the edge of the urban environment and the countryside.

 The landscapes and objects he photographs have ‘minor histories’; from their creation to destruction and final abandonment. A process delayed by repair and recycling; acts that further enrich their ‘history’, increasing the complexity of their appearance.

 Daniel’s most recent work attempts to define and express the uncertain sensations and often quite magical responses he experiences during these explorations. The resulting structures may have a surrealist quality; become remote landscapes and settings of questionable and unsettling perspective and narrative.