Dave Jordano

This recent work is an extension of the long term night photography project I started in Detroit in 2016, resulting in my published book in 2018 titled “A Detroit Nocturne”.  I’ve now expanded it to other Midwestern rust-belt cities and rural towns.  

Photographing at night opens up a whole new spectrum of possibilities for documenting urban and rural cities.  There is often a dreamy, surreal quality to the scene that you seldom experience during daylight hours that captivates my imagination and drives my interest.  I’ve chosen to make these images at night not only to put more emphasis on their locale by presenting them in an unfamiliar light, but also to introduce a moment of quiet and calm reflection.   

I photograph mostly structures within urban and rural communities.  These structures are an integral part of the living fabric of the cities where residents rely on their existence to feed, cloth, support, and employ themselves and others.  They're an essential part of the economic machine that drives the city and gives support to all of the different communities.  These are after all the physical evidence of where we have carved out our collective ambitions and lived out our dreams.

Dave Jordano completed a BFA in photography from the Center for Creative Studies in Detroit in 1974. In 1977 he established a photography studio in Chicago, shooting major print campaigns for national advertising agencies. Jordano’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in museums and galleries, including the Chicago Cultural Center (solo exhibition); Michael Mazzeo Gallery, New York; the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design; the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Canada.  In 2015 Jordano was awarded the $50,000 Canadian AIMIA AGO prize for photography.  Recent publications of Jordano’s work include Articles of Faith: African-American Community Churches of Chicago (2009), Detroit: Unbroken down (2015), and A Detroit Nocturne (2018). His work is held in several permanent collections, most notably the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, and the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.