Artist Statement

The Education of Len Bernstein

My training as a photographer and teacher began when I had the rare opportunity in 1974 to meet and be accepted as a student by the well-known and respected humanist photographer Lou Bernstein. He had been a member of the Photo League and studied with Sid Grossman, both notable in the history of photography. More importantly, he later studied with the esteemed American poet, critic, and founder of Aesthetic Realism, Eli Siegel. I am forever grateful to Lou for introducing me to Aesthetic Realism and the principle that met my hopes and changed my life: “All beauty is a making one of opposites,” Siegel stated, “and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

My education took on greater scope and depth a year later when I began to attend the rich curriculum of classes at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City—classes in poetry, the visual arts, music and more.

By chance I had met what most only dream of, a way of seeing the world and oneself that is beautiful, true and kind—and as a photographer I consider myself one of the most fortunate in the history of the medium. At the Foundation, I studied with photographer and poet Nancy Starrels in her class, “The Honoring Eye.” There were other groundbreaking classes, including “Critical Inquiry”, and “The Visual Arts and the Opposites”, taught respectively by important American painters and critics, Dorothy Koppelman and Marcia Rackow. I had the honor to study with Eli Siegel in 1977, and in 1978 began attending professional classes for consultants and associates with Aesthetic Realism Chair of Education, Ellen Reiss. In these magnificent classes all the arts and sciences are a means of understanding reality and oneself.

My years of study have been the happiest of my life learning what it means to give people and things what they deserve and how this is the beginning of art—the real thing. This is the education that has made me the photographer and teacher I am increasingly proud to be. There is no degree program at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. One never truly graduates from learning how to be fair to reality, and, in my experience, there is no more crucial or joyful study.