Dylan McDermott has spent much of his career in motion: pacing courtrooms on The Practice, unraveling as Ben Harmon in American Horror Story, slipping into menace on Law & Order: Organized Crime; and leading the chase on FBI: Most Wanted.

But later this month, the actor will arrive in Sarasota in a quieter mode: with his camera, his dog Otis and a gallery show at Burns Gallery on Central, just north of downtown Sarasota.

The show, hosted by gallery owner Nikki Sedacca, will include 35 of McDermott's photographs and marks the actor's third exhibition, after earlier shows in Montreal and New York City. McDermott says showing the work has been “a lot of fun,” and that he's “happy to share it with the world and Sarasota."

His interest in photography began long before this exhibition. He traces his interest behind the lens to 1986 and the set of Hamburger Hill in the Philippines, where he met a set photographer named Don McCollum.

“He taught me how to use a camera,” McDermott says. “From then, I had a great affinity for it. I liked getting lost and spending the day with my camera, just walking around and popping off shots. It was sort of a meditation.”

That philosophy still seems to guide the work. Sometimes, “there’s a happy accident where things just present themselves," McDermott says. Other times, “you go in to shoot something specifically.” Sometimes, he says, he'll direct a subject “a little bit” if the frame is not quite where he wants it to be.

The title Magic Realism comes from McDermott's own take of on what makes an image land. “The realism is the shot itself, finding the person that you want to take a picture of," he says. "It’s a real person. It’s not staged.” The magic is harder to predict. “For every 100 pictures you take, maybe only one is magic,” he says. “You don’t know when that magic is going to happen.”

He found a lot of magic in Cuba, where several of the photographs in the Sarasota exhibition were shot. People there, McDermott says, “really loved having their picture taken. He says he enjoyed “being in the street and taking folks’ shots.”

He speaks about faces in almost topographical terms. “The landscape of someone’s face” is what draws him, he says, though he admits the instinct is difficult to pin down. And when he decides whether or not to keep an image, the standard isn't primarily technical. “[It's about] feeling, really, more than anything else,” he says. “I’m trying to evoke a feeling when I take a picture. I want me to feel something and I want you to feel something when you look at it.”

That idea seems to connect his photography to his acting, too. McDermott says he thinks of it all “under the umbrella of art.”

“When I’m not acting, I’m writing, or I’m taking pictures. I need to create something,” he says. “It’s not like I want to do it. I need to do it.”

His cameras are part of that continuity too. McDermott says he still uses an old Canon A-1 from the Philippines, which he recently pulled back into service, and a Leica, whose look he loves. These days, he adds, street photography can be trickier than it once was. “There used to be a time when you could take pictures of people randomly,” he says. “That's a little bit harder now, because it feels intrusive somehow.”

Sarasota isn't an arbitrary stop for him, nor is it the first. McDermott says David Shapiro, of Semkhor Productions, “has kept me connected to Sarasota all these years,” calling McDermott down for short films, talks and now the photography exhibition. But his relationship to Sarasota started earlier. “When I was a kid, my step-grandparents lived there,” he says. “So I would go down and visit them when I was 15 years old.” They lived on Longboat Key, he says, and this trip has a “full circle” feeling. 

Burns Gallery owner Sedacca says the actor's work belongs in Sarasota. “Magic Realism reflects Dylan's ability to uncover the quiet beauty and mystery within everyday life,” she says. “His work holds a rare balance: intellectually grounded, observant and authentic and deeply human. Sarasota is a city defined by its commitment to art and culture. Its community of artists, collectors, and institutions fosters meaningful dialogue and creative exchange, making it an ideal place to engage with his work.”

A portion of proceeds from the exhibition will benefit the Caring for Children Charities Scholarship Endowment Fund, which supports the accredited Digital Cinema Production Program developed in collaboration with Suncoast Technical College for local public high school juniors and seniors. 

Magic Realism is set to open Sunday, March 29, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Burns Gallery, 1348 Central Ave., Sarasota.