C. Daniel Dawson, Backscape #1, 1967

C. Daniel Dawson: This is abstract. But also it's a back and an Afro on a beach. 

Narrator:  C. Daniel Dawson.

C. Daniel Dawson: Where is it abstract? Where is it real? I'm constantly playing with that, at what point is this a landscape? At what point is this literally a body on a beach? How do you find that exact moment between the two? So, I was working towards that. Some of this type conceptualizing about photography led to a series of photographs that I would later do titled "Portions and Proportions." In this series I tried to find the location in the creation of a photograph that is both the studying of an object and the framing of a location, finding that perfectly balanced point where it is both. 

This photograph is actually my wife at the time on one of the beaches in New York. In fact, I really like this photograph.