Hallucinations - Why We Love Tim Davis
Dada Duende Record Club is pleased as punch that Tim Davis is among the visual artists contributing work to our first edition, themed “The Xenophile”.
Tim Davis is a photographer, songwriter, essayist, clairvoyant, dad, husband, thinker, bonfire-loving music nerd, professor, and former Upstate New York Olympian who lives in Tivoli, New York with his beautiful family.
Initially, when composing this post, I started down the road of trotting out Tim’s impressive CV and history as an artist, but it began to read like a laundry list, so I have changed tack and decided to keep it relatively simple. I mention his credentials because he DOES have an impressive, prolific and interesting history, and there are links at the end of this post that you can check out to find out more about him.
So, why do we love Tim Davis?
I love the way he sees the world (this is Hannah, dropping the royal Dada Duende “we” from here on out). I like his sense of humor, it’s his superpower. The first time I sat down and spent time with one of his books, I felt the way I feel when I hear a really good Bob Dylan song, one full of oddball characters and twists. His recent photographs are most often photos of people, and these portraits come across like details of characters from some sort of modern Bruegel painting (to me, anyway).
The Patron Saint of Being Stoned
I love this about Tim’s work:
even though his gaze is unflinching (often downright BALLSY), and even though his subjects may be living or behaving bizarrely, I rarely sense him passing judgment on them. I don’t feel like he is removed from his subjects. I'm having a somewhat difficult time putting this into words, but I think if you are already familiar with his work or you spend some time with Tim's work after reading this, you’ll know what I mean.
To me, Davis seems above all else to be curious about other humans.
More “Look at us kooky monkeys!” than “Look at those kooky monkeys!” There’s a certain joy/relief in it, as a viewer. I dunno, I may be stating the obvious here, but this is what I perceive and appreciate when I spend time with his work. It can be light, and it’s often funny, but it’s not at all compromised in substance and thoughtfulness, and that’s not easy to do. And he does it A LOT. He recently shared some surprisingly beautiful images of people at gas stations on Instagram with this caption: “I don’t want to like filling stations…my values oppose them on environmental and aesthetic grounds…but I love the people I meet in them. Sometimes our values are inadequate to encompass our experience.”
Another thing we love?
Tim Davis is a total music nerd. I always enjoy his record store forays shared on Instagram. When we were first brainstorming the Da Da Duende project, Chris and I reached out to Tim because it seemed like this idea might appeal to someone like him. We had a fun, frenetic Facetime conversation between the three of us that bounced all over the place and generated food for thought on a lot of different subjects. In the course of our conversation, I mentioned that one of our future set themes would be about trees (possibly entitled "Trees I have Loved"). Within a month we received an email from Tim containing a song he'd written about the Ash tree he loves. It’s called “The Emerald”. It’s brilliant.
Tim's songs are, not surprisingly, similar to his visual art: funny, curious, a little acerbic, and well-composed. We hope to have Tim come back and contribute music for DDRC, too.
Did I mention that he writes? Do yourself a favor and read some of the essays that accompany his photos in his wonderful visual ode to L. A., "I’m Looking Through You". Follow this link for a taste. You ought to run out onto the interwebs right now and buy that book and his newest book, "Hallucinations'; which is a more subdued (but only slightly) collection of BEAUTIFUL images that he made in Sardinia while in residency there last year. There are links to both books below.
from I’m Looking Through You
from Hallucinations
I’ll say it again: we are happy that Tim was game to join us on our first official offering. (see note re our Maquette edition below)
I am not a music writer, and I am certainly not an art critic, but I can bang on at length about creations I get excited about.
I mainly wanted to introduce our subscribers who are not as aware of the teeny, tiny, self-important but charming world of fine art photography to Tim Davis’s wonderful work. I hope you will follow the links below to learn more!
ohthattimdavis on Instagram Davis’s ongoing “Upstate Event Horizon” observations on IG are pretty magical.
Aperture Archive for Tim Davis
The Upstate New York Olympics
The Upstate New York Olympics is Tim Davis’s attempt to make art while playing sports. Exploring his local Hudson Valley landscape, Davis invents new sporting events, like the “Lawn Jockey Leap Frog,” the “Trash Day Knife Toss,” or the “Compost Freestyle” and then performs them for the video camera. It is hilarious.
“WHERE CAN I GET THESE BOOKS?!”, you say?
Right here:
Note: Maquette was unofficial, a test to see if we could pull it off, and it’s full of amazing artists, too. Supplies are limited and dwindling on that one, babies