Daniel Rapley

Based in Newark, UK, Rapley is an artist working experimentally with photography to discover new and unexpected ways of seeing with and through the medium.

Through probing the tensions between representation and abstraction, his work meditates on photography’s elastic correspondence with reality, its role in shaping our relations with the world, and reconsiders what its function could be, beyond its status as an instrument of representation. As a result, his work often feels more painterly than photographic.

Rapley’s practice is underpinned by an interest in the strangeness of authorship. By appropriating found photographic material, his work allows histories, contexts, producers and meanings to overlap and conflate, becoming uncanny sites, where authorial certainty has slipped its leash. 

In repurposing the technological waste of the last century, his work simultaneously comments on our culture of disposability and the superabundance of photography that permeates modernity.  

Rapley’s work has featured in group shows at The Barbican, London, Club Solo, The Netherlands and Olympic Park, Beijing and has been reviewed in Frieze, Artists Newsletter and New York Arts. His first museum solo exhibition was held at Lakeside Arts in 2024, to coincide with the publication of his first book, Drift, (Beam Editions, 2024). He holds a Fine Art Masters Degree (Distinction) from Chelsea College of Art and a First Class Fine Art Degree from De Montfort University. He is the Course Leader of the Art & Design Foundation Diploma at Lincoln College and an Associate Photography Lecturer at Lincoln University. He regularly delivers bookmaking workshops in educational and public institutions and collaborates with Designer Bookbinders and Printmaking Charity. His work is held in public and private collections.