Dan Estabrook was born and raised in Boston where he studied art at city schools and the Museum of Fine Arts. He discovered photography in his teens through the underground magazines of the punk-rock and skateboarding cultures of the 1980′s. As an undergraduate at Harvard he began studying alternative photographic processes with Christopher James. For the next fifteen years, Estabrook worked with historical photographic techniques to explore intimate issues about love, sex and death. In his two series, Night & Day and Nine Symptoms, he continues his use of antiquated processes – the calotype paper negative and salt print positive – turning the camera on his own body as he examines his wants, desires and fears. Estabrook presents images which obscure the division between the cognizant and dream states, as figures emerge and disappear into fading backgrounds, body parts levitate and dreams sprout visibly from a woman’s pursed lips.

Waxed calotype paper negative.