Daniel Hojnacki

The Earth Coming Off Our Shoes I was made through acts of sanding, scraping and wiping away the negative prior to it’s exposure. Using the arid natural environment of the desert as my source of imagery, I wanted to elicit the erosion of a surface of stone, and the dust that may accumulate among our shoes as we walk and move through the natural environment.

By manipulating digital negatives on transparencies, I collage and sand away the earth that is then solarized and manipulated further in the printing process. This action is one of creating tension on the surface of the image. An investigation into ways of eliciting a sense of passage of time and expediting the slow process of eroding earth as it accumulates into the dust we breathe and carry with us on the soles of our shoes.

Daniel Hojnacki currently lives and works in Albuquerque, NM where he is an MFA candidate at the University of New Mexico. Hojnacki’s practice strives to show the passage of time by creating accumulated acts of capturing the temporal and unseeable. His work attempts to collapse the distinction of truth within his image-making process, asking how the photograph may amplify a way of seeing and creating gaps in memory and understanding. Using the natural world as his source of inspiration, Hojnacki seeks out visceral and tangible responses to the photographic print, reminding the viewer that the image-making process is not static nor a fixed object of time.

Daniel Hojnacki has exhibited work at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL. The Chicago Cultural Center, with solo exhibitions at Comfort Station in Logan Square and David Weinberg gallery. He has recently exhibited work in group shows with Birds & Richards Gallery in Albuquerque, NM and Foto Forum in Santa Fe, NM.