3rd place
bronze star award
Dan younger
united states 
title
Travel Places: American Tourists
Some of the best pictures in this collection are images that cause the viewer to imagine that they are presented with the middle of a story. It is my goal to goad the viewer into figuring out the rest. I don’t mind if each viewer comes up with a different solution
to the question of “what just happened and what will happen next?” I think by giving the viewer a certain amount of freedom, and by challenging them to personally narrate the picture, I am allowing them to invest a small amount of intellectual capital in
the photograph, and thereby making them enjoy the visual experience a bit more.
It comes down to this: I use the excitement of encountering new and interesting places to make pictures, and yet the photographs that end up in this collection are really not about those places, or those times. I think of you, the viewer, when I make these pictures. I want you to encounter something new and perhaps exciting. I want you to figure out what’s going on. Even if we have both been to the same place, seen the same things, I want you to discover a new version of that place.
Younger prides himself in taking on and transforming subject matter in photography which are mostly the province of amateurs: vacations and children. His pictures of strangers enjoying (and photographing) themselves in vacation spots, called “Travel Places” has been shown across the US and was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Sheldon Galleries in St. Louis in February 2014. William Wilson, Director of the Grand Center for the Arts in Tracy, California wrote that Younger’s images are “equally disturbing and charming”. In an essay accompanying the catalog of the 2008 Grand Center exhibit, he wrote “Dan Younger captures the moments in-between the anticipated highlights of the vacation. These are depictions of what really goes on around us in the places we gather in attempts to be entertained, rewarded, and find relaxation. Perhaps the next time we find ourselves snapping pics or posing for the camera, we remember the insightful lessons positioned within the photographs of Travel Places”
Younger’s photographs have also been used in the sets of NBC’s “The Biggest Loser”, on ABC’s “Meet the Newlyweds” on Fox’s “ I Married a Stranger” and on VH1’s “Scot Baio is 45 - And Still Single” among others.
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entry description
TRAVEL PLACES is a portfolio of photographs made while traveling. They are, in fact, tourist pictures, made with the same excitement that all tourist pictures are made, the wonder of a place new to the senses. For a long while, these pictures fit no conceptual package within the framework of my pictures. They were odd scraps left after a trip and different from the work that I saw as “official”. As they accumulated they began to form patterns - consisting of images, concerned with formal design, intermixed with a sprinkling of observations of mysterious and idiosyncratic human behavior.Some of the best pictures in this collection are images that cause the viewer to imagine that they are presented with the middle of a story. It is my goal to goad the viewer into figuring out the rest. I don’t mind if each viewer comes up with a different solution
to the question of “what just happened and what will happen next?” I think by giving the viewer a certain amount of freedom, and by challenging them to personally narrate the picture, I am allowing them to invest a small amount of intellectual capital in
the photograph, and thereby making them enjoy the visual experience a bit more.
It comes down to this: I use the excitement of encountering new and interesting places to make pictures, and yet the photographs that end up in this collection are really not about those places, or those times. I think of you, the viewer, when I make these pictures. I want you to encounter something new and perhaps exciting. I want you to figure out what’s going on. Even if we have both been to the same place, seen the same things, I want you to discover a new version of that place.
about the photographer
Dan Younger is a Professor of Art, founder of the studio area and former chair of the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Missouri in St. Louis. He has over 150 national and international exhibits, and his works are in numerous public collections including Museum de Stadt, in Gladbeck Germany, The Fox Talbot Museum and the National Trust, Lacock, England, The Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), the Harry Ransom Center at UT- Austin, The Saint Louis Art Museum, and Diaphne - Pole Photographique, of Montreuil, France.Younger prides himself in taking on and transforming subject matter in photography which are mostly the province of amateurs: vacations and children. His pictures of strangers enjoying (and photographing) themselves in vacation spots, called “Travel Places” has been shown across the US and was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Sheldon Galleries in St. Louis in February 2014. William Wilson, Director of the Grand Center for the Arts in Tracy, California wrote that Younger’s images are “equally disturbing and charming”. In an essay accompanying the catalog of the 2008 Grand Center exhibit, he wrote “Dan Younger captures the moments in-between the anticipated highlights of the vacation. These are depictions of what really goes on around us in the places we gather in attempts to be entertained, rewarded, and find relaxation. Perhaps the next time we find ourselves snapping pics or posing for the camera, we remember the insightful lessons positioned within the photographs of Travel Places”
Younger’s photographs have also been used in the sets of NBC’s “The Biggest Loser”, on ABC’s “Meet the Newlyweds” on Fox’s “ I Married a Stranger” and on VH1’s “Scot Baio is 45 - And Still Single” among others.
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