that the subject of Bill Dane’s pictures is the discovery of lyric beauty in Oakland, or the discovery of surprise and delight in what we had been told was a wasteland of boredom, the discovery of classical measure in the heart of God’s own junkyard, the discovery of a kind of optimism, still available at least to the eye." Patricia Bosworth: "In class [Diane Arbus] kept stressing the factual, the literal, the specificity inherent in photography. She loved Bill Dane’s postcard photographs of American landscapes." Diana Edkins: "The adequacy of meaning lies in what we recognize as the intensity of Dane’s human response." Ann Swidler: "A strain of American photography since Robert Frank has concerned itself with finding what is centrally American - attempting the great American novel in visual form." "The greatest American stories, like The Deerslayer, Huckleberry Finn, or Moby Dick, were boys’ stories, written for a culture which didn't want to grow up. Yet in their secret hearts, those stories were about evil and the kind of redemption that might come from confronting its mysteries." "Dane shows us not an exotic heart of darkness, but the American difficulty in dealing with what we cannot understand, own, or control." "Bill Dane's photographs seem to be about foreignness, both here and abroad. But they are really about us as Americans. They ask whether we can learn to love - not because alien worlds accommodate themselves to what we expect, but because we have learned to see even where we cannot understand." Jeffrey Fraenkel: "'What’s that?' is not an uncommon response for viewers confronting one of Bill Dane’s photographs. This is a curious question, given the fact that Dane approaches the 'real world' with his camera as squarely as Atget, Evans, or Friedlander. He photographs what exists, with no manipulation or fabrication." Sandra S. Phillips: "The vision of the world of Bill Dane, both inside and outside America, is often downright funny. But often, it is also a tragic vision. In his photographs are voltages, a disturbing strangeness." Bill Berkson: "Dane has cast himself as a surveyor of ceremonies stuck deep in our wishful, ornamental glut, our fuss." References Further reading Dane, Bill: pictures, Katherine Mills: design, Gary Bogus: binding. Little Known, Handmade Book, Bill Dane, Albany, CA, 1983 Gollonet, Carlos, Coordina. Catalog to accompany the Exhibition, Bill Dane Photographs Outside and Inside America, Diputacion Provencial De Granada, Spain and