Background
Maisel, David was born in 1961.
entertainment company executive
Maisel, David was born in 1961.
Maisel earned his Bachelor of Arts from in 1984 where he studied with Emmet Gowin. He attended the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, and received an Master of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts in 2006 where he worked with Larry Sultan.
His work is exhibited internationally and is collected in major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, LACMA and the Victoria and Albert Museum. His work has been the subject of five major monographs, published by Nazraeli Press, Chronicle Books, and Steidl. Maisel was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1990.
Maisel is a trustee at the Headlands Center for the Arts.
Black Maps
Black Maps is a multi-chaptered series of aerial photographs of environmentally impacted sites. The series includes surreal and graphic images of open pit mines, cyanide leaching fields, military testing, water reclamation projects, and urban sprawl.
A monograph of the work was published by Steidl in 2013. Library of Dust
Library of Dust focuses on copper canisters containing cremated remains of psychiatric patients from the Oregon State Hospital.
The human ash and copper have reacted chemically, causing colorful mineral blooms on the surface of the cans, which are presented as full-frame portraits against black backgrounds.
Maisel also photographed abandoned wards and found objects from those wards as part of the series. In 2009 the New York Institute for the Humanities held a symposium on the Library of Dust. The project was published as a monograph by Chronicle Books in 2008.
History"s Shadow
History"s Shadow is a rephotographic project in which Maisel worked with x-ray images from art conservation archives from major museums.
Maisel began the project while a Scholar in Residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and continued the work at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. History"s Shadow was published as a monograph by Nazraeli Press in 2011.
