Artist Statement:

Every city is Babel

Man-made and encompassing humanity, the city exists simultaneously as celebration and symptom of mankind’s greatest work. The cityscape is a physical manifestation of the very human tension between what is and what ought to be, and also the moral tension between what merely appears to be and what is unspoken. This constant double tension infuses Shawn Danker’s photography, which both celebrate and rehabilitate the contemporary and the human in its most natural habitat, the city.

Shawn challenges himself to create and recreate this double vision in each new series he embarks upon, to help audiences become aware of the natural, the undiscussed, the undisputed, the implicit – and to ultimately reflect and question them.

Shall we dance?

In this ongoing collaborative project, the photographer visits performers across modern, classical, and urban dance genres in various cities to celebrate, question, and contest the contradictory nature of the global city in co-equal context and dialogue with dance.

These layered compositions are no mere celebration of the beauty of the body in motion, the cityscape no mere context-less backdrops, no mere showcase of a single dance form. They are, like Shawn’s double vision, a mesh of genres whose complexity and wit that enables audiences to discern and appreciate more than what is presented in mere photography.

Do write in to inquire if you are a dancer interested in collaborating on this series or if you're an art collector interested in purchasing prints.