Dan Biferie: A Life in Photography

A strong case could be made that no one knows Daytona State College better than Dan Biferie, Chair of the School of Photography and holder of many titles in his time here.

Photo by Aldrin Capulong

When Dan retires May 2020, he’ll take with him a lifetime of memories that include his time as a student, an extraordinary set of circumstances that allowed him to be hired in 1975, seven presidents, 10 vice-presidents, five deans, and countless students who have gone on to accomplish great things.

The College has been open for 62 years and Dan has been a member of the faculty for the last 45. His sense of humor comes through when he looks around his office and talks about the physical things he has to take with him too. Books, meaningful personal items and of course pictures, many of them his own work, will all have to be packed up eventually. “Whenever you’re doing something, you can’t help but think about it being the last time.”

Dan has fond memories of how it all began. Describing himself as a lost young man, he had a history teacher in high school who noticed the only time he didn’t get into trouble was when he had a camera in his hands. She helped him get a spot on the yearbook staff and the school paper, and a supportive graphic arts teacher allowed him to use the lab whenever he wanted. Dan chuckles when he admits the benefits included a permanent hall pass and putting him front-and-center at many exciting events, but it gave him something even more important - direction.

Dan’s first attempt at college ended badly at Miami Dade Community College where his grades were poor, but after working in a photography shop, he decided to give it another chance. He enrolled in the photography program’s first class in 1969 at Daytona Beach Community College and learned that photography was much more than he ever thought it could be, falling in love with it as an art-form.

Dan earned his AS in Photography in 1971 before transferring to Ohio University, where he added a bachelor’s and master’s degree to his resumé, but things weren’t going so well in Ohio. He and his wife Kathy, an artist, had big plans to open their own studio or gallery, but the terms he uses now to describe those plans are “pipe dream,” “thin” and “poorly conceived.” It never got off the ground.

The young couple struggled as Dan worked odd jobs to make ends meet, but in 1975, everything aligned for him. Through a connection with a former classmate, Dan was headed south again for a job at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. He and Kathy packed up the station wagon with their German shepherd in the backseat, and made the drive down I-95. He wanted to stop in Daytona Beach though, to pay a quick visit to his instructors at Daytona State. It was a fateful meeting.

A professor had just resigned without notice a week before classes were scheduled to start, and they needed someone with a master’s degree to fill the position quickly. They asked Dan if he would interview for the job on the spot. So, with Kathy and the dog still in the running car, Dan interviewed. “I got the job right there, not at all like it’s done now,” Dan said. “I went out and told my wife, who knew it was taking longer inside than it should have, ‘We’re not going any further, this is where we’re going to stay.’ I swear there was an angel on my shoulder.”

Job interviews weren’t the only thing different about those days. There were battles when it came to building the School of Photography into what it is today, and starting as a 24-year old professor, Dan was there for all of them. An early victory though, came in the form of a grant that would allow them to build three cases to display students’ work from other colleges. That small thing was the humble beginning of the Southeast Museum of Photography, a seed Dan traces back to his crazy idea to open a gallery with no money and no art in Mount Vernon, Ohio.

In 1977, Dan convinced then President Dr. Charles Polk to allow him to use space in the Jeanne M. Goddard Center as a gallery, creating the DBCC Gallery of Fine Arts. Shortly thereafter, in 1979, the gallery began to host events and collect work from some of the most well-known photographers of the time. “We had no budget, we vacuumed the carpets and mixed the punch ourselves, got volunteers and students to help, and people to donate work. About a year or two later, we were given a small budget to work with and were able to bring in some internationally known photographers.”

There is a note of pride in Dan’s voice as he describes the early days of his career, and a sense of deep gratitude when he talks about the people who helped him along the way as the School of Photography continued to grow, and the present-day Southeast Museum of Photography became a fully realized dream when it officially opened the doors to a multi-million dollar facility in 1992. There are so many people who played a part in what Dan has accomplished in his time at Daytona State, it seems to overwhelm him as he reflects and talks about them.

Among the people Dan singled out during his time at the College was Dr. Polk, whom he called a visionary whose greatest strength was giving people the freedom to take something they were passionate about and move it forward. Dan’s wife also played a major role, with Kathy serving as museum curator for 12 years during its earliest days. “I would hang the work myself, and she would come in there with the baby, look at what I did, and then tell me to go sit with little Danny. She would re-hang everything and make it look good. To this day, she’s the one with all the tools.”

Dan now looks forward to being “just a practicing artist” and not being on a set schedule, but there are still things he will miss, most of all, the students who allowed him to have a job where he could talk and share ideas about the things he loved the most, while growing and learning right alongside them.

His time at Daytona State was a lifelong investment that shaped his entire life, but he says it’s time for someone else to take the torch. He knows everything that he helped build will continue to grow after he’s retired and wants to see what others are able to do with it.

I would not have been at Daytona State 45 years if it were not for the people and the support I had here. It’s given me a chance to grow and work with extremely talented people, and I never lost sight of being part of something much bigger, because there are a lot of good things happening here.

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