Jack Barrett is pleased to present The Terrain, a solo exhibition of new works by New York-based artist Daniel Terna. This is Terna's second solo presentation with the gallery. Spanning a seven year period, the photographs in this exhibition record intimate portraits of people across a multitude of festivals, media spectacles and protests, interspersed with quiet observations of daily life.

Working at the intersection of photojournalism and personal narrative, Terna weaves together stories from seemingly disparate subjects. In 2017, the artist attended Donald Trump’s inauguration to make portraits of spectators, approaching the ceremony with a sense of curiosity and pathos. His photographs—formal compositions of a multigenerational group of Americans with unknown political affiliations (he deliberately didn't inquire about party affiliation)—are unified by the subject’s straightforward gaze, their bodies articulated in sharp focus against the hazy backdrop of an overcast winter day.

Over the next several years, the artist traveled to the Juggalo March on Washington, a niche rally in opposition to the FBI's classification of Juggalos as a gang (“Juggalo” refers to superfans of the Insane Clown Posse hip hop duo); the March for our Lives, protesting gun control legislation following the Parkland high school shooting in Florida; the Women’s March; the Global Climate Strike; and recently, pro-Palestine protests adjacent to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Across all of these events, Terna is interested in witnessing and chronicling the various movements, big and small, that shape our current landscape.

As a child of a Holocaust survivor, inherited trauma and the ramifications of past events are the driving forces in his image making. Two large-scale photographs in the exhibition were taken while Terna was an artist in residence at a Benedictine monastery in Bavaria, not far from the Dachau concentration camp, where his own father was an inmate during the war. Monastery Bed, St. Otillien Archabbey, Eresing, Bavaria, DE depicts crumpled white bedsheets in ethereal light, its tranquility belying the history of the dormitory, which was once used to rehabilitate Nazi soldiers during the war. Another photo, Youth Parade, Ruethenfest (Rod Festival), Landsberg, Bavaria, DE, depicts a rousing group of German children dressed up as knights at Ruethenfest, a folk festival in the town of Landsberg, where Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf while imprisoned.

Other photographs in the exhibition document moments from everyday life — road trips with friends, still lifes in his father’s studio shortly after he passed, and the 2024 total solar eclipse, among other episodes. Installed together, the works in this exhibition form an elaborate cross section of experiences sought out by the artist for their individual impact.