By Claire Han
Student artist Dylan Buckley Delaney was featured this spring in a film photography exhibition called SECRET SHAPE at the UC Santa Barbara Glass Box Gallery.
The show’s catalog described the exhibit as “all the spells that can be cast by baring, veiling and/or transforming the personal.” Delaney’s work was featured alongside that of three other art students: Lucy Holley, Owen Jenkins, and Valentina Chavez.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Delaney is a photographer and fourth-year Art major whose photographs in the exhibit contemplate sites of urban memories of his own upbringing and his friends. Photographs in his collection are based in nostalgia and range from pictures of a friend’s childhood home with poetry overlayed to photographs of the night Pacific Coast highway.
Dylan Buckley Delaney’s photographs from the UC Santa Barbara Glass Box Gallery exhibit, featuring poetry overlayed over a friend’s childhood home.
The visual artist sat down for a recent interview to discuss his work and the motivation behind it.
Q: What inspired you to take photographs of nostalgic urban sites and what message do you hope viewers take away from them?
A: I define my inspiration for nostalgic photographs of urban memories as a feeling of returning to a place that meant something to you a while ago and returning to that as a changed person. I hope that people can draw on their own histories and connect to the photos in their own way. I imagine the viewer having their own narrative they build with my photos. I hope that from this exhibit, people can spend their time with the photos and be a little vulnerable with it.
Q: How did you get interested in photography and how did you get involved with the exhibit?
A: I got into photography around 2017, coming from a skateboarding background — a subculture highly intertwined with the art. After getting injured a couple of times boarding, I started to pick up the camera and realized I was a better photographer, and it has been my passion ever since. I joined UCSB as an Art major and have since joined the honors program. The UCSB Arts Honors Program is a yearlong session that I’ve been able to be a part of. It is such a cool space to grow as an artist—I even get my own personal studio. It’s helped me take my art to a new level, get more critique, learn more, and develop my art style and presence. Ten students get selected by faculty and we get to put on two shows.
Q: What role do you think photography plays in preserving and documenting important memories?
A: Photography is a very honest form of documentary. I’m interested in the intensely personal self-documentation that the medium of photography has to offer, as this often makes it universal as well. It is easy to photograph things that do not affect you, but I am trying to challenge myself by putting more of myself in the photos I take.
Photographs by Dylan Buckley Delaney featuring the Pacific Coast Highway.
Q: Did you face any obstacles while working on the exhibit, especially as a younger student artist?
A: I’m still not great at installing. While I had experience doing one show prior, it is still something new to me. In addition, film is a fickle medium that requires a lot of precision, so a lot of time was spent on developing. Other than that, I was going back and forth to spots, and scouting locations and times to film in order to capture the perfect moment.
Q: How do you define yourself as an artist?
A: I like to be very multifaceted and do a lot of different types of photography. I try to not see myself as a certain type of photographer but instead imagine what form each project will take. I’m inspired by a lot of writing, particularly fiction novels and movies. I’m heavily inspired by older film noir movies. Overall, however, I hope to grow as an artist and photographer further through my last quarter here.
Claire Han is a third-year student at UC Santa Barbara, majoring in Sociology. She conducted this interview for her Digital Journalism course.