David M. Nolan (1945-2021) | University of Illinois Archives

David M. Nolan (1945-2021) was born in Warren, Ohio on May 4, 1945 and lived much of his life in Danville, Illinois beginning in 1977. From the age of 12, Nolan held an active interest in photography. At Southern Illinois University Nolan studied geography and design, but he supported his interests in photography as a student by working at the Buckminster Fuller Archive and by working semi-professionally as a wedding photographer. Soon after this he moved to Warren, Ohio to work as a city planner and to assist his father with his trucking company. In addition, while in Warren, Ohio Nolan set up his first darkroom and began filming blues musicians.

While Nolan initially worked as a city planner for Decatur, Illinois, Warren, Ohio, and Danville, Illinois between the mid 1970s and early 2000s, he later worked at the Danville Manor Nursing Home and Crosspoint Human Services as a counselor for the mentally ill.  In 1978, after taking courses with Orville Stokes, Nolan rekindled his interest in photography and began photographing professionally.

Nolan was initially impressed with Depression-era photographs and began modeling his own photographic style on the work of photographer Walker Evans.  Many of his early photographs from the 1970s and 1980s were of people on the streets. In addition, his professional work also focused on fine art and nudes, two subjects that remained a core focus of his later photographic work.

In 1985, he received a grant from the Danville Area Arts Council to capture through film community life in Vermillion County, Illinois. After completing this documentary project, Nolan was accepted into a Minnesota-based workshop in 1987 that culminated in the Iron Range Community Project.  He also continued photographing blues musicians in Danville and Champaign, Illinois through the early 1990s.

Nolan served as a member of the Danville Art League and the board of directors at the Urbana Museum of Photography. At the request of an exhibitor in 2009, Nolan expanded his artistic focus to sculpture and manipulated photographic print processes which eventually lead to his exhibition, “Altered Images.”  In 2015 and 2016 Nolan developed a mail art project which he called "photo of the month."  He also self-published two books, Personal Archaeology,  volume 1 which was published in summer 2012, and a spiral-bound compilation of his 2015 Photo of the Month series. Nolan died on June 1, 2021.