Daniel Hennelly ’26 – The Bowdoin Orient

Michael Solano

For Daniel Hennelly ’26, the trail to the visible arts has been something however direct. At instances, it has meant hauling a rest room throughout the quad or staring out the window of a practice.

A army veteran and present senior in his 30s, Hennelly makes use of his movie digital camera to share his expertise as a nontraditional school scholar.

His reentry into images started nearly by probability. Nearly twenty years after an preliminary encounter with a highschool images class, Hennelly discovered himself signing up for Photography I within the spring of his sophomore 12 months.

“What I remembered about photo from high school was that it was tedious, a long process that forces you to be patient,” Hennelly mentioned. “I’m very patient with people, but processes? Not at all. So I knew photography would force me to slow down.”

Photography I did greater than gradual him down. It utterly altered the previous historical past main’s educational trajectory.

“That class made me change my major,” Hennelly mentioned. “The fall of junior year, I didn’t take any art classes, and I was miserable…. I didn’t realize how much I’d loved it.”

Hennelly’s newfound ardour quickly gave rise to one among Bowdoin’s most unconventional artwork initiatives: the “You Belong at Bowdoin” sequence. Born from a category task, it consists of nude self-portraits of Hennelly on a rest room throughout campus.

What started as a method to poke enjoyable on the College and the inherent absurdity of “going to boarding school in your 30s,” as Hennelly felt, steadily revealed a extra profound that means.

“It started making me think about how [Bowdoin] is a lonely experience for me,” Hennelly shared. “I can move freely between all conceivable social groups here, which is sick. But I also don’t belong to any of them, which hurts. These are things that I’ve thought about a lot and had never been able to articulate until I’m looking at myself naked on a toilet.”

Following his self-portrait sequence, Hennelly’s lens turned outward by “All Aboard: The People and Places of Rail Travel.”

With fellowship funding and the steering of Professor of Art Michael Kolster, he left Brunswick for a five-week, cross-country Amtrak journey to doc the folks and locations of rail journey.

“The first couple of weeks, I was stressed out because I had no idea what I was doing,” he admitted.

Kolster, who suggested Hennelly on the challenge proposal, noticed uncertainty as a vital a part of the method.

“I told him that when he proposed the project, that part of this was going to be challenging—he knew that already,” Kolster mentioned. “The most important thing is to go out and see what happens. I tried to get out of his way.… This is the time for you to go out and get lost.”

And get misplaced he did. Hennelly navigated uncomfortable seats and wrestled with unsuitable images situations. Packed to the brim with gear, he pressed his digital camera towards the window and shot roll after roll.

Navigating the nation required cautious planning by Amtrak’s rail go system, which provides ten rides however reserves a restricted variety of pass-eligible seats on every practice. Hennelly’s itinerary shifted, but it surely additionally allowed him to reconnect with a community of associates, household and Bowdoin connections alongside the best way.

Back at Bowdoin, he faces the duty of constructing sense of the practically 1,500 pictures he created.

“It’s kind of a chicken or the egg,” Hennelly mentioned. “I could sit down and try to write about this trip, but how am I going to write about it when I’m not looking at what I was doing? Likewise, how am I going to choose pictures if I haven’t written about them? It’s this weird struggle.”

This is the problem Kolster hoped Hennelly would encounter.

“I was encouraging him to let the photographs suggest a greater understanding of what he was actually doing,” Kolster defined. “When you begin, you think you’re doing one thing, and at the end, you realize you might have been doing something else. That’s growth.”

While reels of movie have changed miles of monitor, the problem now’s one each artist faces: What does all of it imply?

“It’s tedious and a lot of emotional work,” Hennelly mentioned. “I spent five weeks trying to create these photos, and I have no idea how it’s going to be received. How do I make others care about these images? How do I make others care about this trip that I took? That’s what I have to contend with.”

As he mulls over the negatives, he is aware of the reply will take time. For Hennelly, it’s simply one other journey he’s keen to take.