Daniel Bellman (1977) is an Italian and American photographer based in New York City. Discovering a fascination for analog cameras and film at an early age, he started taking pictures in his twenties in his spare time, always working with analog cameras and film. His long-standing dedication to photography — mainly practiced on the street — resulted in a spontaneous yet coherent body of work with a distinctive style born of an innate skill for capturing harmonious compositions, a keen awareness of the subtleties of light, and a narrative quality stemming from a solid background in the art of filmmaking.
He likes to think of street photography as something akin to the arcane divining practice of searching water with a dowsing rod. Relying on intuition and fate, the acolyte-photographer roams uncharted grounds with a camera in search of chance events to be imbued with form and meaning in the twinkling of an eye, hoping that the collision of fortuity and intent will deliver a spark of some sort. In the case of his work, the spark seems to burst from an attempt at evoking the possibility that under the mundane, casual surface of reality there lies a subtle transcendental layer infusing meaning into our existence — an essential aspect of life that tends to be neglected in an era permeated by a distracted and skeptical attitude.
