The Terrain Gallery is proud to present an exhibition featuring the work of three photographers who have seen the tremendous value of Aesthetic Realism for art and for life:

Aesthetic Realism was founded by the great American poet and critic Eli Siegel in 1941. In nearly four decades of teaching he showed: "The world, art, and self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites." Eli Siegel was at once the most comprehensive and the most exact critic, magnificently just to the particularity of every work he considered, every subject, every person.

Louis Dienes, David Bernstein, and Len Bernstein had the honor to study in classes taught by Mr. Siegel in which he lectured on all the arts and sciences, including photography--and spoke to artists about their work technically and in relation to how they saw the world.

In "Aesthetic Realism As Beauty: Photography," Eli Siegel's definitive 1951 lecture, he placed the importance of photography as an art -- at a time when many people still questioned whether it was art at all -- and he showed its large meaning for people's lives:
 

The Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel is the most beautiful, honest, and vitally needed education in the world. After centuries of man's thought, Eli Siegel has answered the question "What is beauty?" His Fifteen Questions, Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites?, first published by the Terrain Gallery in February 1955, are the universal criterion, describing what is present in every instance of beauty in the art of all centuries. Now every person can proudly know why he or she loves a work of art. And now every person can love art more.
 
 

Louis Dienes, poet and photographer, was born in 1925 in Asheville, NC, grew up in the Boston area, attended Browne & Nichols, MIT, and New York University, and began his study of Aesthetic Realism in 1943. His poems have been published in The Georgia Review, Black Mountain Review, Pegasus, The Midland Poetry Review, and in the book Personal & Impersonal (New York: Definition Press, 1959). From 1956-1960, Mr. Dienes photographed paintings, drawings, and sculpture for artists, and from 1959-1993 worked as a photographer in scientific research laboratories. He has exhibited in numerous group shows and in 1962 had a one-man show at the Terrain Gallery. In the 1960's he exhibited, as did David Bernstein, with the Aesthetic Realism Photographers in travelling exhibitions throughout the United States. He has been on the staff of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation since 1988, and is currently at work on a book on objects, combining writing and photography.

David M. Bernstein was born in New York City in 1936. He graduated from Brooks Institute of Photographic Arts and Sciences in California, and after serving 4 years as a scientific photographer for the Air Force, he returned to New York to work in commercial photographic studios. He began his study of Aesthetic Realism in 1962. Mr. Bernstein has taught photography at the New York Institute of Photography, Germain School of Photography, and Pratt-Phoenix School of Design and has worked in such diversified photographic fields as medical, aerospace, theatrical, commercial, and portrait, as well as dye transfer color printing. His photographs have been published in Camera 35, Encyclopedia Britannica, the New York Times, Time, Nordisk Tidende, Caribbean Life, and African Sun Times. David Bernstein has had one-man shows at the New York Worldís Fair (1964), Brooklyn College (1974), Sala de Cultura in Pamplona, Spain (1976), and is a co-author of Aesthetic Realism: We Have Been There, Six Artists on the Siegel Theory of Opposites, (New York: Definition Press, 1969).

Len Bernstein has been photographing since 1974, and he studied with Nancy Starrels, photographer and Aesthetic Realism consultant, in the class The Honoring Eye. His Aesthetic Realism education began in consultations in 1975, and he studied in classes taught by Eli Siegel beginning in 1977. His work has appeared in many group shows, including "Recent Acquisitions: Photography," at the New York Public Library. He recently had a 25-year retrospective exhibition at Pleiades Gallery in SoHo. Mr. Bernstein's photographs are in collections including: The Brooklyn Museum; The New York Public Library; Museum of the City of New York; The Library of Congress; The Baltimore Museum of Art; Aesthetic Realism Foundation/Terrain Gallery, NYC, and Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, France.

Louis Dienes, David Bernstein, and Len Bernstein are each now studying to teach Aesthetic Realism in classes taught by Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism.