Dan Marcolina
Visitors who visited The Photography Show – Presented by AIPAD last year and stopped by the stand of Alex Novak's Contemporary Works/Vintage Works were in for a big surprise. Among the exhibited works was a large print, "Nesting Instinct", an AI work by American artist Dan Marcolina. AI images have become quite common at art fairs in recent years but "Nesting Instinct" was decidedly different. Next to the image was a QR code and when it was scanned, be it with an iPad or a smartphone, it would turn the image into a 30-second animated "micro drama".
Nesting Instinct. Pigment inkjet print on archival paper with QR code.
Dan Marcolina told me, "Alex Novak suggested it would be a good idea if I attended, and I'm glad I did. I brought an iPad to assist the visitors. "Do you want to see the image come alive?" People couldn't believe what they were seeing. They thought it was just incredible and keep in mind, the AIPAD crowd is a very sophisticated crowd."
The reactions were much the same when Marcolina showed "Nesting Instinct" and other AI works with QR codes in his most recent exhibition called "Diffused Realities" at the Montco Cultural Center Fine Arts in Blue Bell, PA this past fall. But there was much more besides. The exhibition was a retrospective of Marcolina's 45-year career as a photographer, designer and image maker, from straight photography and darkroom experimentation, to digital image creation and iPhone photography, to mixed reality images and finally into the world of AI.
Dan Marcolina's name will be familiar to many in the design world. For over three decades, he and his wife operated the highly successful company Marcolina Design Inc. I asked him why they closed it down.
"My wife and I had done it for 35 years, and it was time. We got known for the ability to perform some kind of magic. We weren't approached to do standard brochures. It was always something complicated that hadn't been done before: 'We would like a large-scale video, with 3D with a hologram playing.' Anyway, it was time for me to focus on my personal work."
Can you tell me about your early years?
"I grew up outside of Philadelphia, in place called Lafayette Hill. I was a Catholic schoolboy, and I went to a private High School. As I kid, I was into magic tricks in a big way. I loved the world of magic, and I also loved to make people smile. That love has stayed with me."
When and how did you become interested in images and design, and did magic come into that as well?
Weighing the Effects of Gravity. Ref. 15918. Pigment inkjet print on archival paper.
"Working in the darkroom, developing and printing is certainly a kind of magic. I got my first camera when I was around 14. A good friend and I were shooting surf pictures. I'm a surfer and I love everything to do with nature. When I got a bit older, I started to get interested in the edges of photography, looking at people like Stephen Shore and William Eggleston, the 20th-century color photographers. That kind of minimal, ironic juxtaposition of elements in the frame really intrigued me as far as storytelling was concerned, leaving the viewer in a moment of standing in the composition that feels balanced, but where the content and the juxtapositions are sort of unbalanced. To me, those were really great pictures."
When it was time to decide on a career, what did you study?
"As a kid, I was always making little books out of cardboard and paper, as well posters. I had no idea that it was something that could be turned into a career. I got into a college course in landscape architecture at Penn State. My father was a builder, and I thought, "This will go well with the family business." I could work with my dad, but it wouldn't be doing exactly what he was doing. I discovered pretty quickly, however, that landscape architecture was simply not immediate enough for my personality. Planning and planting, all that stuff takes a lot of time, and I like instant gratification. One day, I was walking around campus, and I met a girl I knew, in fact, the girlfriend of the best surfer on the island. She said, "Dan, good to see you. What are you doing?" I told her I was studying landscape architecture. She said, "I'm in graphic design." I said, "What is graphic design?" I really had no idea. She told me about it and it sounded interesting so I decided to change courses. I ran into her a year later. She said, "How did you do?" I said, "Well, I got an A." She couldn't believe I got an A from Lanny Sommese, who was known to be incredibly critical. I knew that I had made the right career choice."
How did you start your career?
Weakened by Her Beauty. Pigment inkjet print on archival paper with QR code.
"After college I worked for a really good design firm in Philadelphia called Ford-Byrne Incorporated, later renamed Design Resource. I was there for 10 years, and I immediately latched onto the computer in 1988 when the Apple Mac came out. I kept pushing the company to get computers, but I always got the same response: "Maybe next year." I got fed up with waiting and in 1990, my wife and I, with the help of my parents, started a business of our own, Marcolina Design Inc. It was one of the very first all-digital design firms in Philadelphia. Other people in the business were quick to raise doubts, "Digital is a fad. Look at this type. It looks horrible." My response was: "No, this is amazing. The incredible freedom you have as a designer. You don't have to hire an illustrator. You don't have to hire a typographer, and you can control it all." Also, the cost was much lower. It was a real turning point for the business, though others didn't immediately recognize it."
What was it about graphic design that grabbed you?
"I felt I was creating a kind of magic, working with images that were surprising, creating brochures where stories were unfolding, from small images and small type, to bigger images and bigger type, creating stories with their own rhythm. My next thought was: "I want to make these images move. How do I make these images move?" Then we got a job from the Discovery Channel. They had seen some of the work we had done, and asked us to do some video to show off their new TV shows for the season at the annual meeting for all the advertisers. They didn't have much to show us, just working titles in fact. I had never done video before. Anyway, we created videos and an interactive CD-ROM for them. I just sort of stepped into all these things one by one."
It's not so long ago but you're talking about technology of a bygone age. What was the next leap forward in technology?
Learning from Clouds. Pigment inkjet print on archival paper with QR code.
"It was Adobe Photoshop, launched in 1990 and that was what really put me in business. Nobody else was really doing it the way I did it. I became absolutely obsessed by it. It's a personality trait of mine, I get obsessed. I would run to work. Back then, there was no undo, no layering in Photoshop and the file size was one MB. That was probably as big as you could go unless you wanted to put it on more than one floppy disk to send to a client. We didn't have the internet and we didn't have good printers either, meaning it was difficult to show the work. When we absolutely had to, we had to take computers and screens to go see the clients. Eventually, we bought a really expensive, government issued laser dye sublimation printer. It cost $15,000, and in 1993, that was a lot of money for a young company. Still, that made a huge difference. I was able to print these things, and send them to clients. The printouts were gorgeous, the detail and the color still look really good today,"
Once you got your own company started, was photography an integral part of the work that you personally did?
"Yes, and we created our own niche. What we were doing in Photoshop and Color Studio, a Nielsen and Bainbridge product, was unique. We used to send out promos to clients like Sun Microsystems, Apple and Adobe, and Adobe ended up using our work on the install disks for the second or third version of Photoshop. Word got around. We got into magazines and books, like the Mac Bible and CA Graphics, People would see the work and call us. Using photography and putting images together in collages became a signature for us. It involved taking Polaroid pictures and scanning them because there really was no digital stock photography back then. I would take Polaroids of say a globe, a column, a hand and a banana, and then collage them together for whatever the client would need to express on their cover of their annual report or their brochure. Photography was a key component of our early brand."
Were you doing personal work alongside your commercial work?
Self Secrets. Pigment inkjet print on archival paper with QR code.
"Yes, and it was distinct from the commercial work, although it was certainly the same in the standpoint of understanding composition, and how color and shape and edges of frames make an image feel complete and balanced. I was reaching in between reality and what my impression of reality was, and sort of putting together little visual stories about people and places and objects. My proudest moment was at a big group show in New York, where there was an exhibition with about 100 artists. Richard Avedon was the toast speaker and said, "I would like to recognize three photographers from the group of work I saw, and especially Dan Marcolina's work because it's work that doesn't try to be beautiful." I guess what he was trying to say that I wasn't shooting sunsets over the ocean, but trying to get to the edges of what our experiences are and the sort of ironic twists that happen there. Coming from Richard Avedon, it was super reassuring that my instinct was substantive."
And then you got heavily involved with iPhone photography.
"I became completely obsessed by it! And I wrote the very first book on iPhoneography, "iPhone Obsessed". It was the first book on using multiple apps to create images. It was published by Peachpit Press and was translated into three languages. The pictures I did on my iPhone were heavily affected by apps, giving them looks that weren't really authentic but felt authentic, like depth of field, blurred edges, tin type looks, those kinds of things. I exhibited that work widely, in group shows as well as solo shows. I did talks at Mac World, and I put on a worldwide iPhoneography contest. I brought over 20 people over from Europe to attend Mac World and to give talks. I also did three eBooks. I did that for five years, just pushing, pushing, pushing. I never really got a big return from it, but made a lot of wonderful, passionate new friends.
Waiting in the Eclipse. Pigment inkjet print on archival paper with QR code.
What did you do next?
"My son asked me one day if I had tried the AI platform Midjourney, that led me to think: "Let's see what it can do!" That was about three years ago. I started putting a lot of my old iPhone pictures and my straight shots and even some of my digital design work into AI, and then cross-breeding images and ideas with words. What's amazing about AI is that it doesn't blur pixels. You don't get faux finishes. It's truly re-rendering, analyzing the picture I put into it, understanding its texture, understanding that it's shallow depth of field. AI gave me the ability to explore an incredible landscape of possibilities, directing it and reworking it in Photoshop. Needless to say, it gets very obsessive."
AI technology has developed quickly.
"The three years that I've been doing is probably like 15 years in regular design technology advancement. Photoshop made my brain explode from the ability to create whatever I wanted, but AI is like 100 times that. Not only can you direct, but you're also getting help and ideas from AI. It surprises you in a way that would never happen in any other process."
You're making it sound almost like a collaboration with another person.
Saying Goodby to a Friend. Pigment inkjet print on archival paper with QR code.
"Yes, and I think in many ways it is. Some people criticize AI for not being genuine, that there's a lack of creative thinking in it. One of the things about Marcolina Design was that we always have jumped in really early when a new design technology is introduced, whether it's early Photoshop, video, interactive, AR, VR or AI. You feel like the best magician for a short time, and then other people catch up, and that's when I move on. With AI, I recognize there are very legitimate concerns, ethics around creative IP, the vast energy consumption and lack of control on the creative process. But no critique of a new process is possible without understanding it from the inside. In my own work, I'm trying to find that balance of putting in my own images, guiding the process with personal ideas, allowing for surprises and then building on those surprises and making it even more intelligence-based. I feel that the images that come out the best in AI are the ones that are not trying to fake photography, but try to go to a place between external reality and internal reality."
For those who have never experienced the technical side of AI, can you tell me about the process, that is, how you work with it and the stages in the process?
"In the early days of AI image creation, the process was more of a novelty experiment—fun, but limited. I would take one of my photos, blend it with another image in Midjourney, and just see what came out. The AI would analyze each source image—its texture, grain, lighting, emotion—and then interpret how to merge them. It would generate four variations, and I'd choose one and maybe nudge it in a direction using simple text prompts like 'add a dog' or 'make it black and white.' But it still felt like collaborating with a mysterious black box—you had influence, but not real control. Now, the workflow is completely different. I design images with much more intention. Instead of just throwing two images together and hoping for something interesting, I guide every stage—composition, lighting, mood, and narrative. I start with my own photography or design elements, feed them into a model for structure, then layer refinements through tools like Krea, Flux, Photoshop, and After Effects. Each pass increases clarity, meaning, and authorship. I'm not just prompting anymore—I'm directing. AI isn't replacing the craft; it's become part of my toolkit, letting me shape images with the same control I've always had, but now with new creative possibilities."
Do you use Photoshop as an additional tool?
"The images you get from AI are often low-resolution at first—maybe 1 to 2 megabytes. It actually reminds me of working in early Photoshop back in the 1990s: small files, but full of potential. Once I generate an AI image, I bring it into Photoshop, which now has incredibly powerful AI tools built in. I can isolate any area and change it instantly—replace a tree with a person, swap the person for a house, or even drop in a castle if that serves the story. I can work in layers, refine lighting, adjust composition, and even change a subject's expression from sad to happy or shift their gaze. Yes, some of this was technically possible in Photoshop before AI—but it took hours of masking, blending, and retouching, and it still never felt completely natural. Now it's instant, and it actually looks right. AI frees you from getting bogged down in technical labor and puts you into a more expressive, creative attack mode. You can spend less time pushing pixels and more time pushing ideas."
What are the changes Adobe has made to Photoshop?
"Today there are multiple AI engines in play, each with different strengths. One of the most talked-about right now is Google's Nano Banana, also called Imagen 3 in some workflows. It's getting a lot of hype because of its clean realism and fine detail. Flux is another powerful engine, especially with its Kontext feature, which lets you guide composition and styling with much more control. These tools let you direct an image almost like a film set—change a Coke can into a glass of orange juice, swap clothing, adjust lighting, or reshape shadows—and the realism is remarkable. Once I have a composition that feels right and tells a story, I bring it into Photoshop. From there I upscale and refine the image using the built-in Topaz Labs Gigapixel, which can take a 1024 px image render and upscale it to 4096px or larger while actually adding believable detail. After that, I do final color grading, texture shaping, and tonal refinement in Adobe Lightroom to unify the mood and give it a cinematic finish.
Once the still image is complete, the next step is to bring it to life with motion—like the piece people saw at the AIPAD fair. Adobe now has integrated some advanced AI animation tools like Google Veo 3.1, Luma AI (Ray and Dream Machine), and others, which let me animate subtle camera moves, atmospheric motion, and narrative effects directly from a single still. The possibilities inside the Adobe workflow now feel almost limitless."
Do you plan to include QR codes for all the AI images you sell as fine art?
"I think that's my niche now. A lot of people are making AI images but there are not too many people doing what I'm doing, as far as the look is concerned and certainly not the animation. Over the years, I have picked up skills in design, photography, video using various technologies and I know them inside out. Right now, Alex Novak and I are discussing which images to release, and we are also discussing a special limited edition, digital frames for them."
You mentioned your interest in magic tricks as a child. That seems to have influenced your images, as well surrealism.
"Sure, that has stayed with me but I also like to surprise people not only in the content of the image but the Ah-Ha moment when it comes to life and tells an unexpected story. Surrealism is one element. Sometimes, that has resulted in some pretty strange and dark images, but I try to reach the outer edges without making it too dark."
Earlier on, you mentioned that you used your own images in creating the AI works. Is that important to you?
"I think it's absolutely essential. In the early days of AI, a lot of the criticism was justified—people would say things like, 'You're just throwing dice, spinning a wheel, and hoping for something interesting.' And honestly, back then it often did feel like that—like you were collaborating with a slot machine. There was no authorship, no personal fingerprint. That never sat right with me. I've always believed that if an image doesn't start from something personal, it has no soul. That's why I begin every piece with my own photography or design elements—textures I shot, skies I captured, people I know, places I've been. Otherwise, it would feel hollow, impersonal—like borrowing someone else's dream.
When I feed my own images into AI, it becomes a true extension of my process rather than a shortcut. My visual DNA is embedded in the work from the very first frame. That's when AI stops being a gimmick and starts becoming a serious tool—because it carries memory, intention, and authorship. It connects who I am as an artist now to who I've been for decades, from darkroom experiments to Photoshop layers to mobile image-making. That's the future of AI art—not automation, but amplification of personal vision."
Is there a legal side to this as well?
"There is, but things are still murky. In March this year, a U.S. federal appeals court held that art created entirely by AI without meaningful human authorship cannot be copyrighted. But that doesn't mean every AI-assisted image is off-limits. If you begin with your own photograph or artwork, and your creative input is significant—steering composition, editing, layering, refining—that can change the legal calculus. Your human contribution becomes crucial to establishing authorship. Meanwhile, there's a landmark case underway: Getty Images is suing Stability AI, claiming that Stability improperly used millions of Getty images to train its AI models without permission. Because of these unresolved questions, it's even more compelling to use your own content. That way, the AI process feels anchored in your personal vision, and you have a stronger foundation to assert ownership, both artistically and legally."
The court ruling has made some companies proceed with caution.
"Definitely. You can see a shift toward what people are calling "responsible AI". Adobe is a good example. They've made a point of saying their Firefly AI models are only trained on licensed content—Adobe Stock images, public domain material, and openly licensed sources—so they avoid the copyright issues some other AI companies are facing.
When you generate an image in Firefly, it includes something called Content Credentials. It's not a watermark you see on the image—it's metadata attached to the file that shows how it was created, including whether AI was involved. That kind of transparency helps protect both artists and clients. Adobe has also said they're building a compensation system so contributors to their stock library can get paid when their content is used in AI training.
You're starting to see other companies follow the same approach—Getty Images, Shutterstock, even Nvidia are moving toward licensed training data and creator partnerships. So yes, the legal landscape is uncertain, but it's also forcing the industry to create fairer and more ethical models, which I think is a good thing."
Keeping in mind the possibilities with AI, how do you decide when an image is finished? Because with Nesting instinct, there are two versions on Alex Novak's site. At a quick glance, they look identical, but they're actually slightly different.
"As AI keeps improving, it's tempting to revisit images endlessly—add more detail, refine textures, push realism. You can iterate forever. But at some point, you have to treat the work like a finished piece, not a software update. For me, it comes down to authorship and value. If I don't declare a final version, the work never earns its own identity. So I'm becoming more disciplined—signing editions, archiving the process, and letting a piece stand. That's what gives it credibility as art, rather than just another evolving AI experiment."
A lot of people have great concerns about AI, not just with regards to photography and design, but there are fears over jobs, faked news reports and much else.
"People are right to be concerned—AI is absolutely commoditizing design. It's wiping out a lot of routine production work and low-effort visuals. If your value is based only on software skills, AI will replace that. But it's not killing creativity—it's shifting where the real value lives.
What AI can't replace is vision—taste, storytelling, emotional intelligence, point of view. That's why I don't believe good photographers or designers are going away. In fact, I think the ones who bring authorship and meaning to their work will become more valuable, not less. You already see it—photojournalists, documentary photographers, fine artists—the demand for authentic human work is growing.
At the same time, AI is opening doors. Tools that once took years to master are now accessible to more people. That means if you have ideas, if you have something to say, if you know how to direct images rather than just generate them—you're in a powerful position. For me, AI isn't killing creativity—it's democratizing it, while raising the bar on originality."
The first time we spoke, you said that there was skepticism about AI in the art market, not least concerning the influence of design. If we look at the interwar years, there was a close relationship between photography and design. I'm thinking of Moholy-Nagy and Herbert Matter.
"I don't think AI is just another tool like the camera or Photoshop. A camera records reality, Photoshop edits it—but AI suggests. It generates ideas, variations, directions. It behaves more like a creative collaborator than a tool. And it's not creating from nowhere. AI is built on the entire recorded history of human culture—photography, design, architecture, film, mythology. In a strange way, working with AI is like tapping into a massive archive of human inspiration. So yes, people worry it lacks 'craft', but creativity was never just about the hand—it's about vision and decisions. Moholy-Nagy and Herbert Matter weren't defined by scissors and darkrooms, they were defined by new thinking. AI is simply the next evolution of that—what matters is the artist behind it."
Where AI comes up short, I think, and it's especially apparent in music, whether it's Bach, or Led Zeppelin done by AI, is that it hasn't got an emotional grounding, a center, somewhere that it springs from. It's also apparent in the "Rembrandt paintings" by AI that I have seen. Is that ever an issue for you?
"That's a great point. A lot of AI work does feel like it lacks a center—there's no emotional anchor behind it, no reason it exists. I'll admit, some of my earlier AI pieces leaned that way. They were visually interesting—cool ideas, beautiful surfaces, clever motion—but not always grounded in something deeper.
I've been very aware of that, and I've been pushing myself to move past novelty and find a stronger point of view—something that carries emotional weight and intention. That's the sweet spot for me now: using AI not just to make striking images, but to make images that feel rooted—in memory, symbolism, myth, personal experience. With the recent work I've released, I finally feel like I'm getting there. The technology is getting better, but more importantly by understanding how to control the AI tools, my voice is getting clearer and more authentic."
Do you think AI is getting closer to being able to create an emotional center? How would it be accomplished? And are there wider implications for that?
"I don't think AI will ever create a true emotional center on its own—because emotion doesn't come from software, it comes from intention. It comes from memory, experience, loss, wonder—the things we carry as humans. AI has no childhood, no scars, no dreams. So whatever feeling you get from AI imagery today is still coming from the artist using it, not the model. But can AI help us get closer to emotional images? Yes—absolutely. Not because it feels anything, but because it can help artists explore ideas faster, try riskier directions, and discover stronger metaphors. The emotion will always come from the choices we make—what we include, what we remove, what story we're trying to tell. AI is getting better at giving artists more nuanced visual language to work with. But the emotional center? That part is still our job—and I hope it always will be."
What kind of reactions have you had to the exhibition?
"The response to the exhibition has been overwhelmingly positive—people walk in and say, 'I've never seen anything like this—how are you doing this?' But there have also been tough conversations. When I speak at universities, students are far more skeptical. And I get it—people worry about what AI means for authenticity, jobs, truth. Deepfakes are real. Misinformation is real. And yes, the energy cost of running these massive models is something the industry has to take seriously.
So I don't dismiss their concerns at all. But what I tell them is: you can't understand a medium by judging it from a distance. When I ask a room of students how many have actually tried using AI to make images, maybe 20 percent raise their hands. I think we need more people—especially young artists—to engage with it critically. Learn how it works. Understand its strengths and its dangers. Then decide how to use it—or whether to use it at all. What worries me more than AI is people giving up their voice in the conversation."
There were numerous AI images in the exhibition. How many do you plan to release to the art market?
"I'll probably release around a dozen pieces to the market. My goal isn't volume—it's clarity of voice. I've always wanted my work to be seen in the context of fine art photography, and now that I've stepped away from running Marcolina Design after 35 years, I finally have the time to focus on that. I'm building a body of work that includes not only my AI pieces but also my earlier straight photography—work that feels personal, intentional, and worth standing behind."
To see and order from the Special On-Line Exhibit on Dan Marcolina's work go here: https://iphotocentral.com/showcase/showcase-view.php/24/0/376/1/16/0. Most of Dan's interactive work is available in two size prints in very limited editions. A special computer screen version limited to an edition of only three, plus one AP is also available. Contact the gallery at 1-215-518-6962, or anovak@iphotocentral.com. All prints and computer versions are available exclusively from Vintage Works, Ltd.
To see Dan's recent physical show of his revolutionary work, go here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/new-ai-perspectives?video=1122523632.
To listen to Dan about his work and his views on AI, go here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/new-ai-perspectives?video=1124039624.
Michael Diemar is editor-in-chief of The Classic, a print and digital magazine about classic photography. In August 2025, he cofounded Vintage Photo Fairs Europe, an organization focused on promoting independent tabletop fairs in Europe and spreading knowledge about classic photography in general. He is a long-time writer about the photography scene, writing extensively for several Scandinavian photography publications, as well as for the E-Photo Newsletter and I Photo Central.
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