Chris Dahlquist

My photographs are works of fiction based on true stories – a distillation of collective memories and inner dialogues, quiet moments and islands of solitude with fewer fireworks but more daydreams. Working at the nexus of analog processes and digital technology, I employ unconventional materials to expand the story my photographs tell. The materiality, layers, textures, shadows, and viewing angles combine to elevate photographs from static images to transformative objects. In this series, Measuring Abundance, I am printing my photographs onto a semi-translucent polyester acetate, then suspending that image over an image printed on a traditional rag paper, obscuring details and adding marks created both digitally and by hand. Measuring Abundance draws on the vocabulary and constructs used in ecology to question how we place value on open land, solitude, and silence. The series is informed by a recent consulting project where I was tasked with measuring the value of artists and the arts using data and graphs and responding to my new involvement in real estate development, where the discussion is cost and income per square foot or value per acre. In all of this accounting, how do we measure the value of something that can’t be quantified?