DANIEL YATES
Occult Photographer
Theology researcher, folklorist, and occult photographer Daniel Yates has spent over twenty years dedicated to grassroots research into witchcraft practices in northern England. His current postgraduate research is focused on ritual practices in pre-Roman Lancashire. This background has informed a lot of the photographic work he has undertaken, which has seen publication in his book Arcanum alongside PILLARS: Circling the Compass (both under Anathema Publishing) and Wyrd Vol 3 (Three Hands Press). An extensive collection of his work is featured in the Ritual Space and the Crooked Path Beyond series (Atramentous Press).
“Daniel Yates has cut a niche for himself through his use of the eye and the camera. An occultist and existentialist with the aesthetic appeal of one who sees where others fail, places Yates at the very pinnacle of expressive modern esoteric art forms. He surmounts the vagaries of mundanity by applying an eviscerating scythe and thereby is able to read through the eye of the lens the augury of the fallen and the hidden track beneath.” - Peter Hamilton-Giles (Atramentous Press, The Dragons’ Column, The Companie of Cunning Folk, and author of The Afflicted Mirror, The Baron Citadel, The Witching-Other, and Standing at the Crossroads).
FIND DANIEL YATES
Arcanum serves as a photographic exploration of its namesake, a journey into the other through the vision of another. In a world shaped by textual forms, Arcanum aims to delineate expectations and to open a window into a more fluid and dynamic world where interpretation is truly left to the beholder.
“Everything from colour, form, concept, and action must be allowed to unfold, to manifest in the way it wants to present itself to you. Exposure to the multitude of occult streams that have revealed themselves can make this act more difficult as these influences promote specific ideas, images, colours, and forms that apply to the work they do, much like language.” — Daniel Yates
This work aims to challenge the accepted norms of how the occult is perceived and rendered in image. By passing light through the forge of the lens, Daniel Yates teases out from the shadows a world that lies hidden in plain sight, exposing concepts that are often elusive and intangible, yet ever-present. Each image in this work is a window into a much deeper stratum of awareness and understanding; the contemplation of the image over time will reveal to the onlooker an arcanum that is purely their own.
“Through such contemplation, the images observed become transformed, and whilst each viewing yields new insight, others remain yet hidden – so it is that the living image remains forever familiar yet unfamiliar, known but unknown, worldly yet ‘other’. ” — Martin Duffy
PUBLISHED WORK
Arcanum
