Robert Dash
Robert Dash is an educator, naturalist and photographer whose work features the complex textures and patterns of micro nature. His photographs have been published by National Geographic, TIME, Lenswork, and Buzzfeed.
His photographs have appeared in galleries and juried shows in the US and internationally. He was shortlisted for the Visura/UPI Grant for Storytelling On Climate Change, 2018. His images traveled as part of the international outdoor exhibition The FENCE.
In 2017, Dash authored On An Acre Shy of Eternity, Micro Landscapes at the Edge, which won
the Nautilus Book Awards Gold for Photography and Arts, and Best of Self Published. In 2016 he presented the widely-viewed TEDx lecture, “The Intercourse of Nature.”
His current traveling exhibition about food and climate change is entitled "Food for Thought/ Micro Views of Sustenance: Threats and Prospects."
A new book, FOOD PLANET FUTURE:Food Art and Science in the Anthropocene, is currently in development.
An image is a stage, where drama, conflict, tension, metaphor, epiphany, tone, relationship, and psyche play out. Shadows, curves, orifices, spikes, flakes, wisps and convolutions suggest this daily life drama revealed. Our breath, the beats of our heart, the patterns and textures of thought paired with dreams and struggles, are themselves micro-landscapes, with corollary expression in natural forms. Gazing into these images gives me great appreciation for the simple complexity (or complex simplicity) of nature. If I shift my perspective just slightly, however, I find that these images mirror the psychological and spiritual intricacies of my life as well. —Robert Dash
“Under high power microscopes Robert Dash reveals the minutest details of the natural world. Filaments and stamens resemble extravagant fragments of postmodern architecture or plumes of swirling fabrics. ... Dash stunningly juxtaposes and fuses these images with full scale versions of leaves, feathers, mammals, and fish in a mouth-watering collage of the earth’s precious food resources. A vision of life as though viewed simultaneously through a microscope and a telescope...” —Rob Kesseler, Emeritus Professor of Arts, Design & Science, University of the Arts,
London and award winning author of Seeds, Fruit, and Pollen
“Robert’s work shines a new light on the wonder and microscopic complexity of our food, appeals to the need to diversify our diets, and offers hope that the strength of the human spirit and our collective ingenuity is sufficient to implement solutions at a time of multiple crises.”
—Dr Christopher P. Cockel, Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change Coordinator, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew/Millennium Seed Bank, United Kingdom
“Robert Dash’s work celebrates and challenges the concept of scale, broadening small beauties into wide revelations about ecosystems, food systems, and the imperiled futures of both.” —Thor Hanson, author of Buzz, and The Triumph of Seeds
“...like fragments of mysterious ecosystems that no one has ever seen... (They) are meaningful, visually poetic observations about how the things we cannot see can show us how our very lives can be under the threat of extinction.” —Lensculture
“An excursion through these photomontages feels as if one might be exploring an intricately curated cabinet of curiosities, each image drawing us into a microscopic world, leaving us wondering what else might lie in the vast, as yet unexplored universe we have wandered into.” —The Passporte Fine Art Digital Space