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ways of knowing

In his project “Ways of Knowing” Daniel Stier takes us inside the world of scientific research to meet the real people whose work, represented in these images by an intriguing array of self-built technologies, holds the promise - and perhaps the threat - of transforming our lives.

Together with photos taken in various research institutions across Europe and North America, the book includes a series of homemade experiments, shot in Stier’s own studio, that seem to ask us to consider the similarities between the scientist’s domain and the artist’s.

Both domains, lab and studio, are characterized by big questions, obsessive convictions and a high degree of specialization. Now Stier has invited us, the outsiders, to look in. We do so with wonder, dismay and, depending on our disposition, even a certain faith.

Featuring essays by Professor Pedro Ferreira (Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor in Physics at Oriel College) and Daniel Jewesbury (writer, artist and lecturer at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin).

Two volumes swiss-bound into a single cover.
168 pages with 71 colour plates.
Screen-printed polyvinyl chloride dust jacket.
Dimensions: 216 × 261 mm.
Design by YES Studio.

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Press

Ways of knowing combines Stier's long-running fascination with chronicling the world of science and academic investigation with his own artistic take on science-themed still lifes of 'imagined experiments'.
Wallpaper Magazine

... it’s almost a modern version of Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel’s Evidence project
Erik Kessels

By viewing scientists at work in the lab as artistic, creative figures, photographer Daniel Stier has created a surreal series that shows researchers in a whole new light.
The Guardian

Sometimes science is just plain weird. Daniel Stier makes it look even weirder, documenting seemingly bizarre experiments at state-of-the-art facilities for his series
Ways of Knowing.
Wired Magazine

Daniel Stier has produced an outstanding photographic work in scientific research centers all over Europe; shots which meet real laboratory experiments halfway between science and art.
Corriere de la serra

Fascinated by the strange environments of pure scientific research, Daniel Stier set about investigating the idea of experiment as an artform.
British Journal of Photography

In short, Ways of Knowing is a smart, engaging book, which neatly takes advantage of the way we have been culturally conditioned to accept the authority of certain types of inquiry, while doubting others.
1000words

There you are. Curious you are, eager, always searching for new knowledge; your whol life is set up around it. But that there should be a day where you ask yourself why you do this, who would have thought?
De Volkskrant