About the Artist (Just Who is This Guy, Anyway?)
Artist’s Statement from Daniel Loren Moret
Using lighting, composition and my equipment, I strive to express the soul of a place in the most visually expressive terms. As a photographer, I am well aware that a camera can work in both directions and reveal a lot about the inner state of the person behind the camera in addition to showing the outer world in front of the lens. Photography allows me to pursue my lifelong passion for creating art with my passion for traveling and exploring other places and cultures. As I’ve said often, travel is the best education. As well as a mountain of fun. Photography is also a constant challenge and a never-ending learning opportunity.
From my two college degrees in cinema, I’ve been influenced by movies (certainly film noir with its night scenes and neon) and the work of various cinematographers. It became evident to me how impactful this education was when documentary photographer John Bauguess commented that my shots resemble individual frames from movies taken just at the onset of climactic scenes. There are also parallels in my subject matter to American photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, European photographers like Eugene Atget and Robert Frank, the German-Canadian Ulrich “Fred” Herzog and painters including Edward Hopper.
My work has regularly been on display in solo and group shows at area art galleries and other venues, and works are in many private and some public collections. For more info about that, see the Collections and Exhibits page.
Oeuvre (“Body of Work”)
For several decades, I’ve tended to look for inspiration and opportunities in the older hearts of major cities and in small villages, and my primary interests are street scenes, public squares, statues, vintage neon and historic architecture in Europe and North America. So I’m essentially a street photographer. In my American images, my big focus in recent years is vintage neon signs (before they disappear), as well as other urban scenes along the way.
Early on, my emphasis was on wilderness and the natural world, especially water, and I spent considerable time in Yellowstone and the Tetons. I work primarily in color and use digital cameras, and, for those who are curious about tools, now use a Nikon Z7 mirrorless camera and a Leica V-Lux 114, both of which are compact (especially the Leica) and well suited for street photography. The earliest images on this website were taken with a Nikon FE2 film camera.
On the Integrity of Images
A major reason for the power of photographic images to move and inspire us both intellectually and emotionally is that we view them as a genuine and rarefied window on reality. Photographs can be like carefully chosen, individual frames from a documentary film. In order to retain the honesty and integrity of my images, I choose not to utilize computers and Photoshop to add a moon to a night sky, remove telephone wires, or change a dull gray building into a bright yellow one. If you see an object or color in the final image, it’s because that’s what I originally saw through my lens and the camera captured, so you’re put into the scene as if you were standing exactly where I stood.
Dan at his successful solo show at La Follette Gallery in Eugene, Oregon in 2003.
Professional Life
In addition to my photography, I did marketing and communications work for two decades, primarily for colleges and universities, including Oregon State University and Lane Community College, as well as leading the marketing efforts for Oregon’s largest public utility, the Eugene Water and Electric Board. My creative work in writing, art direction and project management earned national awards for print advertising campaigns, brochures and a long-form student recruitment video. In addition, I’ve done consulting work for worthy nonprofits to help them communicate more effectively with their audiences, and I served on the board of directors for Healthy Moves, a nonprofit that is dedicated to the health of kids by providing exercise trainers to schools where physical education funding has been curtailed.
During my most recent marketing work at Oregon State University as faculty (non-teaching) from 2015-21, I did a range of marketing projects including being the editor of a magazine for donors (issues are available at ir.library.oregonstate.edu/collections/0v838729r?locale=en) and overseeing and mentoring graphic design students. Here’s what Phoenix Dawn Thomas, a superb graphic design intern that I supervised for two years, kindly had to say about me and our work together:
“Dan’s many strengths have made my experience…by far the best work experience I have had to-date. If my job could go beyond a student position, I would want to continue working under his guidance and expertise because he offers the eye of a designer, the mind of a writer, the principles of a leader and the heart of a friend. He is the best sort of person to have on a team because he brings out the best work in those around him.”
Formal Higher Education
I earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Oregon in Mass Communications with an emphasis in cinema history, theory and analysis. I did some teaching while a graduate teaching fellow along with part-time jobs in video production as an undergraduate—and sold a lot of beer at the Hilyard Street Market just off campus (it’s still there) while living a block away in a big old house with 13 roommates (not recommended, but it was cheap). My wide-ranging interests also included coursework at the University of Minnesota, Minnesota State University-Mankato, Western Washington University, Fairhaven College and Lane Community College. I also found long-range hitchhiking in my late teens and early 20s to be its own educational endeavor.
Current Home and Personal Life
When I’m not traveling, I enjoy our historic home on Friendly Street in the vibrant and funky Friendly neighborhood in Eugene, the second-largest city in Oregon, with longtime partner and traveling companion Paula Staight and our incredible black cat. Having lived previously in other states, I’m still enamored with the western edge of the Northwest, the people who choose to live here and the region’s landscape, culture, food, beer and wine.
I previously lived in Minnesota, Iowa, Washington and Yellowstone National Park (where I managed the book and photo department at the big store at Old Faithful and, yes, saw some bears up close, hiked and backpacked a lot, and really got to focus on photography for the first time). In addition to my acquired family here in Oregon, I still have some family in and around Mankato, Minnesota, and donated a kidney to a brother in 2016 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, an event that transformed his life and also mine in wondrous ways that were as profound as they were unexpected. Put simply, donating to others improves their lives and your own. Many thanks to the literally hundreds of people at Mayo who played a role in making it happen.