New York photographer, Elisabeth Bernstein, creates “images that transport the viewer into a fluid space– a non-localized erosion of time — a world between reality and fiction, past and present, painting and photography.” She has two series that completely drew me into that fluid space, Sleepers, and Scapes.

Elisabeth’s education roster reveals a life engaged in art and photography, starting at the Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art in Brittany, France, then to the Tisch School of Art at New York University, New York, onto Brown University in Providence, RI, and ending at SPÉOS Paris Photographic Institute, Paris, France. The result is a sophisticated ability to see the world beyond the tangible. “I examine memory and time through a lens-based archaeology. I explore personal mythologies, the yearning for a utopia, residue from the past.”

The Sleeper images are each an entire night of sleep, usually 6 to 8 hours. “I was examining non-linear time which moved between interior and exterior worlds.”

Images from Sleepers

The Scapes are a series of spaces created from powder paint pigment submerged in a vessel. I begin each one with a loose concept of a terrain and texture. Using light and a certain palette of colors, I work with the material and wait until the world seems ready to photograph. Often, I use the same base of pigment and then add and subtract material to form a new Scape. Some of the images are the result of a base that has been altered many times for different pictures.

Images from Scapes