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Daniel Cooney Fine Art is pleased to announce our first solo exhibition of vintage black and white photographs by Siegfried Halus. The exhibition will feature approximately 25 photographs measuring 11x14” and 16x20” from the 1970’s.

This series of photographs depict nude figures emerging from the darkness of nighttime in rural landscapes mostly illuminated by flashlight and ambient moonlight during long exposures. The artist asks his subjects to explore with their bodies environments ranging from Connecticut, to Colorado, New Mexico and California. The images evoke ritual, myth and mysterious ceremony. The artist says, “I’ve always been interested in issues of human consciousness, gender and myth as a way to understand my place in a complex world where daily existence can often be habitual and sometimes meaningless.”

Halus was born in Salzburg, Austria and immigrated to the United States with his family as a young boy in the 1950’s (is this correct?). He began his artistic career as an apprentice to his father, a liturgical sculptor and later studied figurative sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and received an MFA at the University of Hartford. Upon finishing his graduate studies Halus turned to photography as his primary medium because it enabled him to generate a more encompassing and exploratory relationship with the human body.

Halus currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has exhibited and lectured on his work internationally since the early 1970’s. His work is in numerous public collections including the Santa Barbara Museum of Fine Arts, The Portland Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Halus’ photographic work has been published in four monographs and his critical writings have been published in many books and journals.