bi·o·pic

  • Luke Alan Davis

  • bi·o·pic

  • Born in Weatherford, Oklahoma, Luke Alan Davis is a photographer, dancer, & conversationalist. After high school, he danced professionally with prestigious companies such as Tulsa Ballet & Nashville Ballet. He was also a founding member of contemporary dance collective NewDialect. He received his BFA in Photography at Parsons School of Design, as well as minors in Gender Studies & Printmaking. Intrigued by the theatricality of everyday life, Davis acts as director, performer & spectator in his photography. His image making falls into the realms of nostalgia, performance, & identity; queering notions of Hollywood ideals & gender norms, while parsing through his family's ancestry.

  • The title bi·o·pic comes from a cinematic retelling of an iconic figure’s life. The force behind this photographic project was greatly inspired by my love of films, & the figures who starred within them – the “many gendered mothers” of my life, a term I borrowed from Maggie Nelson. bi·o·pic is a multimedia collection – equal parts documentation & daydream – of self-portraits, family portraits, collage, & installation.
    My image-making explores nostalgia, performance, & identity; queering notions of Hollywood ideals & gender norms, while dissecting my family’s Native American identity & our history of assimilation into white culture. Working within these intersections of my being, I hope to call into question the very performance of identity, blurring the lines of authenticity & artificiality. The pieces are a way of harnessing the power of mythmaking: I act – you stare – we perceive.