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Artist Exhibitions:
Awards
2001 Second place award, New
York Camera Club Annual
Competition
Group Exhibitions
2002 Texas Woman’s University,
Denton, TX, “Regarding Beauty”
2002 Camera Club of NY, Annual
Awards Exhibition, Juried by
Andres Serrano
2002 “Illuminance, 2002”,
Lubbock, Texas, Juried by Judy
Dater
2001 Eleven East Ashland
Gallery, Phoenix, AZ, “...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Reviews:
Coming Soon!
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Collections:
Coming Soon!
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Statement for Michael Berkowitz
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Although for the past 30 years I have been primarily a painter and sculptor with work in museums throughout the country, over the past two years I have added photography to my creative endeavors. As a photographer, I have been concentrating on a series of sepia-toned black and white images. As well as being inspired by French erotic photographs of the 19th century, and by the “Storyville Portraits” of E.J.Bellocq, the work has also been informed by my background in painting, decorative arts, sculpture and performance.
With this series of images, I have allowed myself to be concerned solely with beauty, and the simple pleasure of looking at it. I am not interested in standardized, polished notions of the “perfect woman” but in the beauty of real women. I therefore prefer to work with inexperienced or non-professional models. Each woman’s particularities and “imperfections” are what I find most interesting and beautiful. I try to photograph each model as if through the eyes of a lover, seeing each as if they were the most beautiful woman in the world.
The modernist aesthetic of faceless human forms on a blank background has always left me cold. Never remotely a minimalist, I have always admired old photographs for the richness, lushness, and texture of their settings. The context is almost as important as the model. In life, whenever we are in a position to admire a partner’s naked beauty, it is always in a certain context, and that becomes an integral part of the experience; the texture of satin sheets, for example, or the contrast of flushed white skin against a purple velvet pillow. These kinds of details become heightened to the point of fetishism during moments of intense intimacy. I try to bring this kind of intimacy and intensity to my photographs. Many of the props are things I have collected over 30 years of travel in over 85 countries. Others, I have built, sewn or otherwise fabricated. The scenarios, though elaborately staged in my studio, recall moments of intimacy. They pull you into a private world, undisturbed by the noise of modern life.
I work with a 4X5 camera, enabling me to fully bring out all the rich detail, which is further intensified by the sepia toning. This heightened intensity gives the images the quality of a dream or memory.
Among other awards, I have just won second place in the New York Camera Club annual competition for this year.
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