Los Angeles photographer, Beth Herzhaft , in her words,  graduated cum laude from The University of Hard Knocks and received her MFA in Photography from Nowhere In Particular. Her first commercial job (photographing gangster rapper Schooly-D) resulted from her finding her way into the art department at Capitol Records, back when you could get away with that sort of thing. She has been a freelance photographer since the 1990’s, working with numerous publications, advertising agencies and record companies. The rest of the time she is shooting fine art. 

Beth has recently opened a solo exhibition of her project, The Indecisive Moment,  at the Curve Line Space Gallery in Eagle Rock,  Los Angeles running through January 6th.  Beth explores the “tension between meaning and meaninglessness”, focusing her camera on the mundane and unpretentious.

This is a series of contemporary photographic landscapes that explores the interconnectivity of seemingly disparate elements. The subject matter I gravitate toward is unspectacular, and the images are a mischievous reaction to “epic” photography: In area photography there is no “decisive moment”: What is captured is a comma rather than an exclamation point. Through the juxtaposition of spatial elements and choice of subject, a “discovered” narrative emerges, highlighting incompleteness as a condition of everyday life. The viewer’s gaze is turned to the space itself, the friction that results from juxtaposing certain elements, and to the myriad details which define these environments. There is both a sense of idealism and anxiety, albeit a humorous one, and it is my hope that both the beautiful and the absurd can coexist in this work.