Craig Becker: Scratch

Craig Becker: Scratch by Aline SmithsonOctober 31, 2016

©Craig Becker

I thought Halloween might be an apt day to feature the work of photographer/artist Craig Becker. His transformative photographs are both unsettling and riveting, and I have had the great pleasure to juror Craig’s work into several exhibitions, most recently the Masks Exhibition at the Southeast Center for Photography in Greenville, SC, where I awarded him the Juror’s Choice Award. He currently also has work in Residue, at the University of Maine’s Farmington Art Gallery through November 9th and in the Texas Photographic Society 25 at the Martin Museum of Art in Waco, TX running through Nov. 13th, where he was awarded First Place by Juror Rixon Reed of photo-eye fame. To top if off, his work appears in the new issue of Musee Magazine, Issue #16 Chaos.

His layered, twisted portraits sometimes feel robotic, mummified or in the process of hatching from an inner skin. Craig manipulates his images in such a way that one needs to dig to find the photograph and needless to say; the excavation is worth it.

Craig Becker is a photo-based artist whose varied creative experiences – gallerist, a professional photographer, collagist and digital fine art printer – are each marked by the exploration for the visually evocative. In his current work, he draws upon these experiences to create richly layered images exploring the edges of the human condition. From his lakeside studio in rural Maine, he combines multiple images drawn from his own work and archival photographs. He starts with a general theme, but the work is constantly transformed during an intuitive and spontaneous process. The work comes together around notions of the unknown, perceptions, loss and transformation. His work has been widely published, received numerous awards, and exhibited nationally and internationally.

©Craig Becker

Stories form the foundation of our human experience. I create incomplete stories, where the elements of the image touch but their relationship is ambiguous. This encourages the viewer to connect the dots and create their own narrative. The framework is visually and emotionally complex, inviting exploration into the beauty within the shadows.