I’ve been a fan of Rita Bernstein’s work for a long time. Often featured in SHOTS and The Sun magazines, Rita’s work was also showcased on the cover of Black & White Magazine in 2006. The cover featured a cracked doll’s head. It was a haunting and powerful image and I’ve never forgotten it. Personally, I think it was one of their strongest covers.

Rita’s work has a special quality–a quiet and beauty that comes from watching and waiting.

“I began to photograph in earnest after I left my career as a civil rights lawyer and had two young children to whom I was tethered. I explored the sorrows as well as the sweetness of family life and, more generally, the ambivalence that shadows intimate relationships. Although my subjects have primarily been young people, it is not my intention to examine childhood specifically. Rather, I am interested more broadly in the complex mysteries of the human psyche. I find the uninhibited behavior of children to be a rich source of clues to the interior life generally; with awkwardness and eloquence, they experience the same psychological and social dramas with which we continue to struggle as adults.”

As you can see on her site, her work has been celebrated with honors and exhibitions. Rita’s current show, Toyland, opens October 9th at the Nexus Gallery in Philadelphia.

From theDoll series

Sections from other series