Channel Surfing
It began as idle play in the 1980’s using an SX-70 Polaroid camera and a TV with broken color adjustment dials. It evolved into a large collection of images documenting what I created on the small screen. As my “technique” became more refined and I understood the latitude of the TV and the SX-70 film I began to focus on more targeted imagery, mainly nature programs, soap operas, and sports. The photographs took on an otherworldly theme. Photography critic Andy Grundberg observed, “If our accustomed ways of interpreting lenticular images - those supplied by both traditional photography and the electronic media - are no longer as secure as they once seemed, then what remains? Something slippery, elusive, and spectral, perhaps, as in Beth Burstein’s unearthly images of humanoid figures…”
Two of these images were included in my first exhibits in New York City, a group show called “Acceptable Entertainment” — they were hung alongside photographs by John Baldessari, Harry Callahan, Nancy Burson, Robert Heinecken, and other photography icons I greatly admired. I was in my early 20’s and humbled to be in their company in this exhibit, which then traveled nationwide via the Independent Curators Inc.
Click on any photo below to enlarge and scroll.
