Audrey S. Bernstein

Fragments and Voices

Weaving mysterious images with personal memories takes the viewer on a journey into an abstract world that is familiar yet surprisingly new.  Fragments and Voices, is composed of mystical, complex images that evoke a world of personal surrealism.

People often believe that photographs allow the recording of truth.  In fact, the challenge of the medium, for me, is to juxtapose images in an unconventional fashion and create an illusory world.  Therefore, I compose the photo-collages in the camera from multiple exposures.  They include found objects, images, original drawings, and photographs.  This approach allows control of the final image on multiple layers.  My ability to intermingle incongruous material serves to focus the viewer on the images and their relationships rather than the techniques employed.

My intent is to provide people with the realization that familiar objects are enigmatic, that personal memories and myths can become elements of understanding and symbols of intimate truths.  The recurring themes of war, religion, rebirth and mysticism haunt my imagination.  These are the intangible concepts that appear throughout my images and create a rich reservoir of ideas for future images and projects.