About Dan Marcolina
Dan Marcolina is a photographer and visual artist whose work connects camera-based imagery with digital experimentation. His fine art series, Diffused Reality, brings together original photography, artificial intelligence, animation and augmented reality.
Each work begins with Marcolina's own photographs. He combines and art directs the imagery through generative AI, then resolves the image through manual digital post-production. The resulting pictures extend the photographed moment into layered visual narratives, where beauty, tension and transformation coexist.
Many works continue beyond the still image. Viewed through a phone, selected prints reveal animation and added dimensionality through augmented reality. The physical print and its digital counterpart become two parts of the same artwork.
Marcolina's practice spans traditional, mobile and digitally constructed photography. He is the author of iPhone Obsessed, published by Peachpit Press, and has shared his approach through lectures and educational presentations for Apple and Adobe. He presented Diffused Reality at the 2025 AIPAD Photography Show.
Diffused Reality is available as signed limited-edition archival pigment prints and in Complicated Relationships 2, an art book that combines photography, AI and augmented reality.