An Approach to Art and Life Based on the Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel
 |
|
Welcome to my website . . .
My name is Len Bernstein, and when I began to photograph over 30 years ago, I felt I found a way of expressing myself that met something so deep inside me that I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. Walking with my camera, the city streets seemed transformed--friendlier, more interesting--and I spent hours searching for dramatic situations, trying to capture the right moment. Looking through the viewfinder, what I saw had new value for me, boredom and loneliness seemed to vanish, and I wished I could feel that way all the time. And hoping to learn what made a photograph successful, I avidly studied the history and technique of photography. My hopes were met when I
first heard
this principle stated by Eli
Siegel, the American critic and founder of
the philosophy Aesthetic
Realism: “All beauty is a making one of
opposites,
and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in
ourselves.”
I've had the thrill of testing this principle in thousands of
instances,
from the first known photograph taken by Nicéphore Niépce
around 1826 to the most modern work of today. It explains what makes a
photograph good and how our personal questions are the
questions
of art--dignified and cultural! As a man who once felt cold
to people and things didn’t mean enough to me, I learned that a large
reason I cared for photography is because it shows that even a fraction
of a second has permanent meaning. Boredom, I also learned, is really
ego in disguise--the feeling that the world isn't good enough to hold
our interest. Studying how the world we are meeting all the time is a
oneness of opposites--such as luminosity and shadow, sharpness and
blur,
order and disarray--I felt I had new eyes as I began seeing beauty that
my conceit had obscured. My greatest pleasure as a photographer is
trying to be fair to my subject, and knowing that, if I succeed, my
work will have a good effect on people. I used to think that art
was a refuge,
a higher realm, separate and superior to the "real" world. But art
stands
for how we should look at every situation, object, loved one, and the
next
stranger we meet. As a photographer and teacher of the art I love, I
know
that the study of Aesthetic Realism enables a person to be not only a
deeper
photographer, but a kinder, more integrated person as well. |
| Biography |
Workshops and Lectures |
| Contact | Purchase Prints |
Terrain Gallery Exhibitions
click here to visit exhibit
click here to read a review of this thrilling exhibit
published in The Tennessee Tribune
 |
| “The purpose of
photography,” Eli Siegel explained, “is to create an
emotion about the world through what has been carefully seen and
selected.” I have learned that emotion has to do with every technical
choice photographers make—from deciding what to include and exclude in
the viewfinder, to selecting a moment that we hope conveys eternal
meaning. Click here to read a review of EMOTION — in BLACK & WHITE and COLOR published in Journal of the Print World. |
 Review in Journal of the Print World |
A New Direction in My Work
| I took an old photograph of a
young woman, in warm sepia tones, formally attired for her high school
graduation day, around 1930, and joined it with a landscape in cool
tones of 2008. One of the ways I did this, technically, was I made the
old photograph semi translucent where there were clouds in the studio
background, and they became continuous with the clouds in the
landscape. The young woman accents repose as she hovers peacefully
above silver light on the horizon, in proximity to still waters and
dark promontories. However, we can imagine that, like ourselves, she
could also be turbulent, with thoughts and feelings that were heavy and
light, darksome and bright, like the clouds above. This image has special meaning for me, because the woman in it is my mother, Helen Bernstein. Once, I didn’t see her as having feelings like my own, and when I thought about her, it wasn’t in relation to other people or the wide world, I only saw her as my mother. What I learned from Aesthetic Realism enabled me to know her better, to have more wonder about her life, and I’m very grateful for this. |
Published Articles about Art and Ethics
People on an Escalator Share A Dream
published in Tennesse Tribune,
The Birmingham Times, The Philadelphia Sun,
La Vida News of Houston, Texas, and African Herald Express
published in The Birmingham Times,
The Bulletin - Philadelphia's Family Newspaper,
Tennessee Tribune
What Do the World and People Deserve? The Photographs of Jacob Riis
published in Photographica World
The Journal of the Photographic Collectors Club of Great Britain
a workshop at Sullivan County Community College
published in Sullivan County Democrat
Gazing into the Mystery of Photography
What will make our roads safe?
published in The River Reporter and Tucson Citizen
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"Do Men and Women Have the Same Question about Strength and Tenderness?" |
Links
Suggested Reading
Aesthetic Realism Podcasts
The Big Questions of Men and Women, Explained at Last!
|
|