Artists - CVZ Contemporary

Photographer Mariana Bersten was born in Buenos Aires, 1975. In 1998 she began her photography career training under Daniel Di Centa in Madrid, by assisting him in his work for Vogue and Elle magazines. In 1999 she started to work under her own name as a commercial photographer for the modeling agencies "K-one" and "Talent". Also in 1999, Bersten published her first photos in the Madrid-based magazines, Abarna and El Mundo. In mid-1999, Bersten returned to Buenos Aires to continue her work as a professional fashion photographer for the magazines Para Ti, Planeto Urbano, and N.X. In 2000, she moved to New York to begin work with the modeling agencies Ford and Elite as a corporeal photographer.

Her training as a commercial photographer, and especially her investigation of the female form, inspired Bersten to pursue her own fine-art photography. In 2002 she was selected to participate full time at the International Center of Photography and started working as a teacher's assistant for the community program for teenagers. That same year, Bersten also taught photography at the"Association for the Help of Retarded Children."

Since her departure into art photography, Bersten has consistently expanded her oeuvre and has continually exhibited her work both nationally and internationally. She has been heralded for her feminine, whimsical dreamscapes that linger somewhere between existential naïveté and imperturbable sophistication. Bersten constantly addresses the theme of marriage, but it is unclear whether her intent is celebratory or painfully doubting. Her subjects' bridal gowns seem to transcend any particular genre, period, brand, or nationality, which renders Bersten's marital message almost purposefully vague. Her palette, a neutral, almost etiolated array of soothing whites, blues, beiges and pinks, only serves to reinforce the ambiguity and multiplicity of personal interpretation.

Compounded by their de-contextualized, fantastical settings, Bersten's subjects successfully accentuate her photographs' complex implications of a highly expressive impartiality. They put a distance between the viewer and her marital dreamscapes, giving one no choice but to project one's own feelings of marriage onto each piece. But, whatever the reading, Bersten's delicate compositions, featuring sensual motifs of whirling fabric, hair, sand, water and horizon, are undeniably gorgeous and hauntingly human.

Although Any Day…
Perhaps it was true, and the fairy tales we were told as children haven't left us behind. I photograph fiction. I tell the tale of my dreams, awake. Maybe these are, therefore, the photographs - or an emotional map, or a personal inventory - of my fears. I started to work on this project after getting married in New York. A feeling of detachment from the ceremony triggered the urge to photograph wedding gowns out of context, in unusual places, reflecting a disconnection between places, people, Nature, and rituals.

I photographed myself; I portrayed women wearing my wedding gown, as well as other previously worn wedding gowns. By dressing them in such a uniform, I transformed them into a white regiment; I forced them to lose their identity in a play that saw them getting married barefoot in the middle of the street, as though trapped in a game run by cruel fairies. In this way, I built my own ritual.
The project grew to include the pictures of families of orthodox Jews that I took on Coney Island as they performed a religious ritual. My interest resides, then, in the connection between these photographs, the ones of the women, and the women's growth process; pictures of their memories, or perhaps of their doubts about the future. Here was another strange, out-of-context ritual: orthodox Jews at the beach, and in the amusement park at Coney Island.
For me, photography is a stage, and its color leads us immediately to associate it with a feeling.
I tell my story, and those of others, as an intimate diary. Fictitious in the white, diaphanous shape of dreams, yet with eyes wide open so that the reflection from the little lamps of vanity cannot blind me.

A Secret Passage

I began working on this project when I started teaching photography and painting to mentally disabled people. It was like in movies when a person finds a secret passage behind a bookcase; I entered another dimension where reality and fantasy mix. I saw the world through their eyes. I found their connection with Nature and their instincts and I realize how removed we are from it.
I wanted to portray their nobility and dignity in my photographs. My students are the main character of my journey that changed my life for good and I am not planning to return.

EDUCATION
2000-2003   International Center of Photography, New York
1996-1998   Photography at School of Visual Arts, New York
1995    "Imagen fotográfica" Alberto Goldestein, Centro Cultural Rojas, Argentina
   "Idea fotográfica" Alberto Goldestein, Centro Cultural Rojas, Argentina

GROUP SHOWS
1996       Centro Cultural Rojas, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1998       Consulado Argentino, Washington USA
       Expo Setiembre, the Gallery Caja dos, Mexico
       Centro de Cultura Ibero Americano, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2003       Galeria Jay Howkins , Chelsea New York, USA
2004       International Center of Photography, New York, USA
Office Ops en Brooklyn, New York, USA
Consulado Argentino, New York, USA
2005       Merryll Lynch Arteamericas, Miami
Room New York, NY

SOLO SHOWS
Galeria Praxis, Miami, USA   2005

AWARDS
Honorific mention at the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) Image '03, New York, USA   2003
Selected for the "Photo Review" contest, New York, USA 2003
Selected for the Wrapround contest Advertising Photographers of America (APA) 2004