Eye Candy: Dash Snow Polaroids

Dash Snow (July 27th. 1981 – July 13th. 2009) was an American artist multi-media artist, known for work that embodied a rebellious, drug-fueled lifestyle. Working with photographs, collages, sculptures, and even his own semen, he created work that captured the hedonistic world of both himself and his social circle of artists, notably including Dan Colen, Nate Lowman, and Ryan McGinley.

Snow developed his aesthetic during his youth, befriending street artists in Tompkins Square Park and the Lower East while illegally graffiting as a teenager.

He began taking Polaroids as a way to document places he had been during black outs, and these photographs became a signature element in his work. Picturing the underbelly of contemporary culture, Snow distances his images with cinematic veritas. Graffiti, ironically broken signage, seedy hotel sex romps, and instances of human despair don’t evoke empathy, but rather suggest a poetic affirmation of humanity and against-the-odds survivalism.

Born on July 27, 1981 in New York, NY, Snow was from a family of prestigious art collectors and a descendant of the Schulmberger fortune, but clashed with and was estranged from much of his family.

At a young age, Snow exhibited in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, and his works are collected by the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the New Museum in New York, among others.

His career was cut short with his death from a drug overdose on July 13, 2009 in New York, NY at the age of 27.