Biography

Daniel Traub is a visual artist, photographer and filmmaker. His photographic work looks at the ways in which historical and geopolitical strains and divisions manifest themselves in the urban landscape.

His projects, often on the peripheries and interstices of cities, have brought him to sites throughout the world. Some of these include Little North Road, a document of the activities on a pedestrian bridge in the southern Chinese coastal metropolis of Guangzhou; Nablus, a study of the West Bank Palestinian town; and North Philadelphia, a body of work which looks at the largely African American section of Philadelphia.

Traub has produced two monographs published by Kehrer Verlag: North Philadelphia and Little North Road. Currently, together with editor Robert Pledge, he is compiling a book of his photographs made in China where he lived and worked from 1998-2007.

His photographs have been shown internationally, including exhibitions at the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, Slought Foundation in Philadelphia, the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt, Germany and the Shanghai Center for Photography (SCoP). His work can be found in public collections, such as the Margulies Collection at the WAREhOUSE, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Traub’s films, both short and feature-length documentaries, explore how societal and familial tensions impact the individual. These include Into Her Own, a biography of the artist Ursula von Rydingsvard; Xu Bing: Phoenix, which follows the creation of two monumental sculptures built from Beijing construction debris; and Barefoot Artist which follows the work of his mother Lily Yeh and her collaborative art projects in marginalized communities.

Additionally, both as a photographer and filmmaker, Traub has been entrusted with commissions from major publications, media organizations and institutions. As a photographer, these have included Time, Newsweek, New York Times Magazine and M, le magazine du Monde. As a filmmaker and cinematographer, he has worked with networks including PBS, German Television ZDF, Arte; and, more recently, with various arts and cultural institutions.

^{Photo: Anne-Lena Traub}

Zhang Huan’s Shanghai Studio