PHOTO ID and Where Stars Are Born and Legends Are Made

Photo ID
Photo ID, 2010, shows incoming college students on their first day of school posing for their college photo ID. ID's were produced on-site while a photo technician handled the system’s camera.

Where Stars Are Born and Legends Are Made
Produced the day Obama was elected in 2008, this three-part piece takes place in front of the Apollo Theater in Harlem.

A news crew does man-on-the-street interviews with passersby; an industrious photographer takes photos in front of his giant Obama backdrop, while Malcom X's huge portrait peers from the side of the frame. Beneath the Apollo's flashing marquee (that reads: "Congratulations President-Elect Barack Obama"), a filmmaker sets up her camera and tripod, presumably to capture the same scene.

I’m drawn to monuments and the ways we commemorate history. I’m especially interested in what drives us to visit historical sites and how we act in the presence of something that’s considered important.

New York City went crazy when Obama was elected. I filmed everything I could on the day leading up to his election and continued filming until the high finally began to wear off. I went to Harlem because I knew everyone would be ecstatic there. It made sense to hang out by the historic Apollo Theater because that’s where talent is discovered by popular demand.

-Daniel Terna

BIO:
Daniel Terna (Brooklyn, NY) works primarily in photography and video. Terna’s work questions when and why we choose to make photographs. His images examine the relationship we had with photography in the past and what it has become today. Terna’s video work blends a personal photographic narrative with a cultural tourist’s use of photography, engaging in the very practice that he is critiquing.

Terna’s photographs and videos have been exhibited in New York at UnionDocs, Outpost Artist Resources, NurtureArt Gallery, Rabbithole Gallery, and the Austrian Cultural Forum. He has also screened at the Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans), Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (Cambridge, MA), Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena, CA), and Gallery Tayuta (Tokyo). Terna graduated with a BA in photography from Bard College.

www.danielterna.com