Dana Stirling is a still life and fine art photographer, and the Co-Founder & Editor In-Chief of Float Photo Magazine. Dana was born in Jerusalem, Israel, and is now based in Queens, NY ; she received her MFA from The School Of Visual Arts in Photography, Video, and Related Media in 2016 and her BA from Hadassah College Jerusalem in Photographic Communications in 2013. Stirling’s work has been exhibited internationally including Fresh Paint Art Fair in Tel Aviv, UNICEF Next Generation Photo Benefit at Aperture Foundation NY, “A Process – Der Greif” in Neue Galerie, Höhmannhaus Germany, Google photography Prize at Saatchi Gallery London UK, Brick Lane Gallery, London UK and Tel Hai Museum of Photography Israel. Some press includes the Lensculture website, FeatureShoot website, Haaretz Photography Blog, Musee’ Magazine, Blow Photo website and others. In addition to publication such as Aint Bad bad ‘from here on’ book, All the best Alice 2015, A process exhibition book and Israel Hayom Newspaper. Dana Stirling is a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow Finalist in Photography from The New York Foundation for the Arts. She has been awarded the Google Photography Prize Finalist (2012), Gross Foundation grant for excellency in photography (2013) and the Weizmann institute scholarship for outstanding student achievement (2011).
About Why Am I Sad? – words by Dana Stirling:
As a teen and young adult, I spent all my time inside my room. I always felt alone within these walls, alone when I was out, alone when I was with friends, just alone. Family was not a comfort, it was a cause for much of the stress, anxiety and mainly the sadness I felt.
My mother, even though we didn’t speak about it often, suffers from clinical depression. When you are young you just think of it as if your mom is just a little sad, so it makes sense that you also are – a little sad sometimes.
As I grew older, and my frustration of the situation grew, I found myself hiding in my room for days, hours and years, buried with my head down in this sand prison. I just felt sad all the time. In this loneliness, I found comfort in photography. Photography allowed me to take my inner dialogue and bring it out by using still life as my personal coded language. I was able to communicate with these objects better than people. They told the story I was not able to.
Now, years after moving as far as I could from that room, I find myself still being sad. Photography has become not just an escape but now also my burden. When I don’t photograph I am sad, and when I do photograph my images are sad as well as if I am no longer able to escape the cloud of sadness that is above my head. Why am I Sad? is my exploration of my personal relationship to photography and the world that I see through my camera’s lens. It is an open question that I don’t intend to answer but I hope that I can find comfort in it once more. This work is still in progress.
