Dan Pak

05/01/2026

"All you need is a dollar and a dream."

Oct 2004, NY, NY.

In 1988, The New York Lottery launched their iconic slogan, “All you need is a dollar and a dream” referring to the cost of a lottery ticket. Despite inflation (and a change in slogan in 1992), a dollar will still get you a lottery ticket. So if you have a dollar and a dream, I guess that’s still all you need.

I was a struggling photographer in the late 90’s trying to make ends meet. I didn’t have a very strong idea of what I could do, where I belonged, how the industry worked, or what industry I was even try to be a part of. I did know that I enjoyed photographing people and I enjoyed looking at photographs that implied some back story. I liked photographs of people that asked me to guess things or at least wonder about that person. I wanted to create photographs like this, of people and their stories, unspoken dreams, etc… and I wondered if I could one day make a real living doing something like this. I guess that was my dream.

By the early 2000’s, I was making a living as a photographer and a lot of my “dreams” had come true. But as often is the case, I found that maybe I didn’t understand what I was pursuing. Or that maybe the pursuit was the dream. Maybe there is as much value in having dreams as there is in realizing them.

One warm autumn day in 2004, I gave 100 New Yorkers $1 each in exchange for a portrait. For the next few weeks, I paid attention to the news for a story about someone buying a winning lottery ticket with a dollar given to them by a stranger with a camera. There was no such story. But it was a fun thought.

Selected works of New York based photographer Dan Pak including portraiture, reportage, art projects, and travel collections. Dan is currently based in Brooklyn, New York.

02/05/2026

“This very moment, this very world, this very body is the point. Now. You see? But, if you’re seeking something beyond all the time, you never get with it. You’re never here.”

01/31/2026

McMerica January 2026

01/26/2026

January 2016.
10 years ago, I moved back to NYC after 10 years away. A big snow storm hit the week I was settling into my apartment in Gramercy Park. I have a very distinct memory of eating a sh*tty meal at Orion Diner late one night because I hadn’t gotten any groceries yet and it was too cold to go further than a block or two. The food was terrible, but the memory is nice. But I also have learned since then that memories aren’t real. We just piece them together like movie montages to make footage we need. I sometimes feel like I just got back here even though 10 years have gone by and a lot has obviously happened. I got everything I wanted in those 10 years, everything I came back for… and it turns out that maybe I didn’t actually want any of it. Maybe there was some sort of metaphor in that snow storm 10 years ago and I wasn’t paying attention.

01/12/2026

🪧

12/28/2025

Y2K - “They say 2000 zero zero party over”

We really thought the world was gonna end back then. Maybe not literally, but likely in some sense of catastrophic mayhem or a reset of some kind, a page turn. The looming threat was mostly exaggerated but we chose to half-believe it anyway. It was absurd but felt real. Banking systems were going to go haywire, internet would have a meltdown, systems across industries would be tricked into thinking we had reset to 1900; a real large scale disaster. And we responded by making jokes and throwing apocalyptic themed parties. It was as if we had a collective subconscious fantasy to see society spiral into chaos.

And for better or worse, on January 1, 2000, of course the world did not end. Here we are, over a quarter century later, trying to keep our heads above all of this information, these zeroes and ones. Here we are, trying not to drown in a conflict between nostalgia and nihilism, trying not to get swept away in this mudslide of information. Seems like the only thing left to do to survive is to swim out with the current, to know and consume all the right and cool things. Otherwise, you’ll be left on this island alone.

And so… welcome to the Matrix and thanks for the Prozac.  At least the parties were good along the way.

Happy New Year 🎉🥳🍾

12/06/2025

NY Times, 1994

A lot of things happened in 1994. I met a lot of people that year who changed my life. I saw and did a lot of things that I had only read about up until that point. I had dreams of writing a novel. I watched some friends venture out into the world and wondered why anyone would ever leave New York. I stayed out late through the night into the dawn doing things you do between those hours. Most of it is all a blur now but still dense with nostalgia, always a lingering familiarity that strikes across all the senses, a reverie that is precise and detailed in my gut. There’s a shape and sound and smell. 1994 reeked of possibility. I don’t specifically miss that time or place (1994, New York), but I do miss feeling like everything was about to happen to and around me. And I miss my friends who aren’t here anymore, especially the ones that I didn’t get to say goodbye to.

I bought my first camera in 1994 and spent countless hours in a darkroom. I documented those years religiously, realizing it would all be worth looking at one day, only to later lose a lot of those photos and negatives in a fire in 2002. I wish I still had some of those photos but I also think they might mean more laid to rest as memories than they could living on instagram.

12/03/2025

Quiet times.

11/18/2025

QNS.NYC.Y2K

05/08/2025

🤗🫶❤️

05/01/2025

Party time.