About Mark
Mark Dornfeld was born in New York City and grew up surrounded by all the culture and art that the city had to offer. In his teen years Mark developed a serious interest in Theatre, Film and Photography. He began to understand the narrative in images. How in theater and film the color and tone of an environment was a major component in the story telling, supporting the narrative in the words. In his photographs Mark was always looking for a narrative in the images. He understood that when people look at a photograph they build a story. They look for relationships between the people in an image or an understanding of a place. Mark's over -riding interest has been in creating unique images that capture the spirt and soul of a moment or a feeling. They relate a narrative or tell a story, though often using non-narrative or painterly techniques to get their ideas across.
Mark's professional life was spent in the film industry working in post production visual effects. Spending his early career as a migrant film worker going form one film to the next and eventually migrating to Disney, where he participated in the creation of visual effects and title sequences for many of its major releases. After eight years at Disney Mark left to open his own small Visual Effects and Title studio. Custom Film Effects was in business as the industry was transitioning from photo chemical technology to digital technology. CFE embraced both platforms and was uniquely positioned to move freely between them. Mark and his team created visual effects for such films as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Tropic Thunder, The Note Book, A Dirty Shame, Chicago, Boys Don't Cry, Austin Powers, Diary of a Wimpy Kid. And many more in a career that lasted 40 years.
Today Mark has returned to one of his original passions and has been cataloging and sorting through thousands of images collected during his working years as well shooting new work. Many of his prints have been sold to individual collectors.
Recently Mark has compiled a book of his Photographs shot between 1968 and 1974 titled "Through Young Eyes" coming of age through the lens of a camera.
Mark Stambler
long time friend and Grant Writer