David Hartwell is a Los Angeles based photographer, artist, animator and motion graphics artist.
Background
David C. Hartwell is Swiss born and a subject of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. He moved to Los Angeles in 1991. He got his first job 8 hours after landing at LAX: night shift scanning thousands of images at Synapse Technologies for famed Tron SFX guru Robert Abel’s new brainchild: interactive multimedia. He rose through the ranks to become Art Director on their second title, “Evolution/Revolution” the sequel to “Columbus: Encounter, Discovery and Beyond”. Of Columbus, only three copies are known to still exist: one is in the Smithsonian Institution; another in the Library of Congress, and the only other known copy is in the IBM vault. Since then, he has art directed, designed and developed visualizations of technical and historical content for the likes of Disney, IBM, Microsoft, Discovery Channel, History Channel and PBS.
David and his wife Sarah managed the Richard Neutra VDL Studio and Residences historical building in Los Angeles from 2007 to 2019. Their restoration work on the building and gardens was recognized by the U.S. Department of the Interior, naming the house a National Landmark in 2017.
30 years since arriving in LA, armed with an arsenal of digital skills he is returning to his first love: photography. He studied photography at the ripe age of 17, in Switzerland. He took classes from famed Magnum photographers Guy Le Querrec and Raymond Depardon. He then moved to graphic design, first at Publicis Conseil in Paris before getting his BFA from Art Center College of Design (Europe).
David’s photographic work is two-pronged. His architectural work (this website) is of a more traditional, craft-oriented nature. It is frequently client driven. His mixed media art on the other hand is either commissioned or self-funded and laced with social commentary.
Recent Projects of Note
Shio Kusaka at Neutra VDL Studio and Residences was David’s last photo shoot as resident of the famed house in Silver Lake. Kusaka‘s ceramics were intended to remain at the house through April 2020. Covid-19 abruptly shortened the show. Curators Douglas Fogle and Hanneke Skerath called me one Friday night telling me everything will be moved out the following day as the city was preparing for a full lockdown. 4 hour shoot as the pieces were getting moved out. A true race against time.
Homegrown – Portraits of Cayman’s Native Plants is an exhibition that seeks to explore a dimension of Cayman’s identity through ten large photographic portraits of native flora. David and fellow artist Bill Ferehawk spent three weeks in July 2019 documenting these sometimes minuscule marvels of nature. Plants are powerful visual markers of a place and a culture and the artists are interested in elaborating on this connection, drawing upon a long tradition of botanical paintings and photographic images of plants. The project is being supported by the National Gallery and the National Trust for the Cayman Islands.
Photo-synthesis is a true convergence of art and technology. David’s photography was chosen as the “face” of a new solar panel technology developed by Compáz, a collective of scientists and artists. David’s photography was printed on sheets of ceramic. These sheets were then applied to solar panels, resulting in two 5㎡ triptychs of three panels each. The printed image is opaque to the human eye, but allows the solar energy to reach its substrate. Both pieces were displayed in Beijing in October 2019 for the 5th International Art and Science Symposium and Exhibition (TASIES 2019) organized by Tsinghua University. The first triptych was installed at the prestigious National Museum of China on Tiananmen Square. The second one, at the heart of the 798 Art District. The project was supported by the Embassy of Switzerland in China, Beijing and Swissnex.