Dan Kosmayer – Artist Statement on Real Fine Art Photography
I’ve spent more than twenty-five years wandering through real places—cities, forests, coastlines, abandoned structures, and quiet corners most people walk past without ever really seeing. My work comes from being out in the world, moving through it slowly, letting moments unfold on their own time. I never know exactly what I’m going to find; that’s the part that keeps me chasing the next road, the next country, the next sliver of light.
Over the years, photography has become less of a technique and more of a way of living. I don’t rush images. I stand with them, wait for them, listen to the atmosphere around them. Some of my favourite photographs came out of long, cold hours in the field—fog moving through cypress trees in Texas, dawn rising over an empty harbour in Iceland, the way an old façade in Amsterdam throws its reflection onto still water, or a forgotten industrial site that holds decades of stories in its rust and dust. Each place leaves its mark, and that mark becomes part of the picture.
I’ve travelled through more than forty-five countries with a camera in hand, but I’ve never been interested in chasing postcard scenes. What draws me back out there, time after time, is the quiet honesty of a place—the weight of a forest, the geometry of a tower, the stillness before a crowded street wakes up. These are the moments worth preserving. These are the places that feel real.
In a world now flooded with synthetic imagery—where scenes can be fabricated in seconds and entire landscapes can be conjured from nothing—I find myself holding even tighter to the value of real, lived experience. Every photograph I create is captured on location, in the conditions I stood in, with the light I was given. Nothing replaces being there. You can’t invent the cold air rolling off a Norwegian street at night, or the silence of an abandoned hallway, or the tremble of leaves in a Haliburton breeze. Those moments have to be found, lived, and earned.
That’s why I sign every print by hand. It’s not a formality; it’s a promise. A way of saying: I was there. This is real. Every piece comes with a certificate of authenticity because I want you to know exactly what you’re bringing into your home—a genuine photograph pulled from a real moment in the world, not an artificial imitation of one.
My style has grown naturally from all these years of exploration. I’m drawn to structure and simplicity, to the way lines and shadows play off each other, to the mood that settles into a space when everything aligns. Black and white has always felt like a native language to me—the honesty of it, the clarity, the structure beneath the surface—but even in colour, I gravitate toward restraint. I want my images to breathe, to hold quiet tension, to give the viewer a moment of stillness in a busy world.
If there’s a thread running through my work, it’s the belief that authenticity matters—not just in photography, but in how we see the world. Real places. Real stories. Real moments. That’s the foundation of everything I create.
And as long as there are roads left to follow, I’ll keep exploring. There’s always another place waiting to be discovered, another quiet moment worth holding onto, another photograph out there in the world looking for me.
Explore the newest photographs from my travels.
Thank you for spending a moment with my work.
