DANIEL ADAMS
a young adult born and raised in Malaysia, sharing a house with his friends that doubles as his home studio. This wise young man about to enter his mid-twenties is worldly, mature, speaks passionately about photography, and is even fonder of his heritage and family. Granted the young millennial had to grow up fast as most young Malaysians do after travelling abroad to pursue their tertiary studies. Even though Daniel is of British descent on his father’s side, living on your own for the first time is no easy feat, especially during his final year, after the passing of his mother. Like the artist he is, Daniel translated the stages of his grief and emotions into a heartfelt series of images dedicated to his late mother in ‘A Love Once Lost’ in 2019.
Early-onset in his burgeoning career,
Daniel caught the eye and recognition from his university days in 2017 as his final year project ‘Why is your English so good’ garnered local media coverage in the United Kingdom. He continues to capture and highlight local stories and real-people and communities like the LGBTQ+ with his Love and Other Drags series, Boys series and Colourless series. He also highlights unrecognised beauties within the community in his Pink series, Dark Skin
Is... series and Batik series.
After a full day of observing Daniel work for our August Man collaborative shoot in his personal studio space, we sat down and asked him to share and breakdown his modus operandi (mode of operating) from conceptualisation to execution.
How did you immerse yourself into the world of photography?
I started getting into the concept of photography when my parents bought me a compact camera when I was in Year 6̶ at the age of 10. I took it to school and it was something fun for me, just to be taking random pictures. When I got my first DSLR, the Canon 550D, I did the same thing taking random images of things around the house such as bringing my toys out to the garden and photographing them. It would usually be inanimate objects. And basically it is similar to what I do now with people. I would take still photos of people and I would create a world within photographs.
I started progressing into taking pictures of my friends and I even did a 365 Project in Year 10 which involved taking a picture every day for a year. This really started to unlock a lot of my creativity and this was the time when Flickr really started to thrive. I started to take a lot of inspiration from Flickr and its artists, the majority of them were American conceptual artists.
This is also when the conceptual stuff started to mould together. I started doing