We’re delighted to welcome Daniel Boetker-Smith to PSC to take up his new role as convenor of second year of our degree program. Daniel has a BA Hons Photojournalism from the University of Wales, a MA Creative Arts from the University of Melbourne, and is currently completing a PhD at RMIT.
His photographic practice deals with the ways in which stories morph and change across decades. His images often deal with narratives where multiple or elliptical truths problematise a straight-forward retelling. He is particularly interested in the photobook as a mode for recounting these sorts of stories.
Daniel has lectured at the National Art School and the College of Fine Arts (UNSW) in Sydney, and at RMIT and Deakin University in Melbourne. He was Head of Photography at the University of Chester (UK) from 2005–2008 and at University of Gloucestershire (UK) from 2008–2009.
He has been previously shortlisted for the Josephine Ulrick Photo Prize at the Gold Coast Gallery of Art in 2009 & 2010, the Centre for Contemporary Photography’s Documentary Photography Award 2011 (CCP), and the 2012 Bowness Photography Prize at the Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne. He was recently shortlisted for the Substation Contemporary Art Prize in Melbourne.
Daniel is also the founder and director of the Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive; a not-for-profit organisation that provides a forum for self-published, handmade, published and limited edition photobooks from all over the world to be donated, seen, shared and experienced. The archive is based in Melbourne but regularly visits photo festivals internationally to showcase photobooks ignored by the major publishers and distributors.
He recently curated a show of Australian and New Zealand documentary photography for the Obscura Photo Festival in Malaysia; and was invited to be a jury member for the 2013 Photobook Award at the Kassel International Photobook Festival, Germany, alongside Gerry Badger, Takashi Homma, Jacqueline Hassink, Erik Kessels, Martin Parr, Rui Ribeiral, Markus Schaden and others.