2013 Data (Information)

Niki Berg: Catalog of works

Berg, Niki

I was the eldest of four children from a working class family in which curiosity and creativity were not valued. After high school I worked as a secretary in an advertising company. Ten years and two daughters later, my husband encouraged me to find and pursue a creative passion and this led me to photography. With camera in hand I found myself drawn to family relationships and the pivotal life events: birth, aging, illness and death. I made portraits of an elder generation of country farmers, urban and rural mothers and daughters, my grandmother in Brooklyn and self-portraits with my mother. Over the course of my journey as an artist, the passage of time continued to intrigue me. I focused on honoring family history, relationship to family and to one’s self, and the physical beauty of my subject’s bodies and gestures. I was fascinated by the way in which these elements are both rendered and revealed in a two-dimensional photograph. More recently, as a part of my own aging process, my work has become more abstract. I now find myself eager to be surrounded by nature, meditating and photographing in a dynamic yet peaceful way. I have taken part in solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. My photographs are in many private collections and in the Fogg Art Museum, The Berkshire Museum and the Museum Of Fine Arts in Houston. My work has been featured in numerous books including “Sacred Connections: Stories of Adoption” and “A Gate Unfastened” which chronicles my journey through breast cancer. I have received two artist fellowships and the Catalogue Project Award from the New York Foundation for the Arts, been a fellow at the Yaddo and MacDowell Art Colonies and have received the Annenberg Medical Art Award for “When Death Comes” a photo essay about the death of my husband Peter.