Detail, Desk, Workshop, from the "Objects In My Father's Basement" series

About the Photographer

Younger, Dan

American, b. 1945

Dan Younger produced the series Objects in My Father's Basement over the span of a number of years. Using a 4x5 field camera he photographed the accumulated things in his father's cluttered workshop and an adjacent room used as an office, leaving them just as he found them. Focusing closely on various tools, souvenirs, books, and any number of half-completed projects, the images capture dense arrangements that appear chaotic. Nevertheless, the logic of the space, Younger notes, was fully evident to his father, who knew immediately where everything was.

Describing the evolution of the project, Younger wrote in 1988: "As time went on, [my father] used the basement more and more… It became 'his place.' In 1986, one year before his death, I started to photograph both rooms. His first reaction was to offer to clean up the place. I don't know if he understood my desire to make pictures of the basement the way it was… Maybe with his failing health, I felt that it wouldn't be there that much longer. Perhaps I felt that other people should see these things that I saw. I do know that after he died, and I continued to work to finish this portfolio, I realized that I was making a portrait."

Younger completed a BFA in Printmaking at University of Kansas, and an MA and MFA in Art Photography at University of Iowa. He has been exhibiting his work since 1972. Younger is currently a Professor of Art and former chair of Art and History at University of Missouri.