Matthew Chase-Daniel was born in Cambridge Massachusetts in 1965 and lived in New York City in the1960s. In the mid and late 1980s, Chase-Daniel earned a B.A. at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, and spent three years in Paris, France, where he studied cultural anthropology, photography, and ethnographic film production at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes & Sorbonne. Since 1989, he has lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

His photography and sculpture have been exhibited across the U.S. and in Europe. He is represented in Santa Monica, California by Craig Krull Gallery.

He is the co-founder, co-owner, and co-curator of Axle Contemporary, a mobile gallery of art based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.