Jeff Berner

Jeff Berner has been an active fine art, portrait, editorial and multimedia photographer since 1968. His work includes hot-air ballooning, portrait assignments, ocean-going yacht racing, open-heart surgery, book and magazine illustration, and travel photography. He has received a number of awards, including two consecutive portrait prizes from Life magazine. His other photography ranges from nature studies to surrealistic "Dreamspaces". He has been a member of the international conceptual/performance art group, Fluxus, since 1965. His photography is found in private and several museum collections, including The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and Musée Pompidou (Paris), and has appeared in magazines, such as Omni, Life, and Psychology Today. Berner has also photographed extensively in Europe and Beijing, and has just completed his most recent book, Creative Loitering in Paris, a photo-illustrated book about the people of what he calls, "the biggest small town in the world." His Paris exhibitions have included his uniquely surrealistic "Dreamspaces," in October-November 2003, at Aux Fous de l'Isle; and his reflections of Paris, "Flânerie Créatrice à Paris," at Paris Historique (The Paris Historical Society), in April-May, 2004. In 2006, his “Dreamspaces” were exhibited at Barclays Bank, boulevard Saint Germain; and in 2007, they were exhibited at Cinema “Studio 28” in Montmartre; and his "Flânerie Créatrice à Paris" photographs were shown at La Commanderie du Clos Montmartre, where he has been a chevalier since 2005. In December 2009, his impressions of Paris and his “Dreamspaces” were shown at Café le Select, in Paris. Berner is the author of numerous books, including The Photographic Experience (Doubleday/Anchor); The Nikon Touch Photography Guide (Bantam Books); The Holography Book (Avon Books); and The Innerspace Project (World Publishing). His books have has also been published in Chinese and Swedish editions. His photo-illustrated articles have appeared in each issue of Montmartre a la une magazine, in Paris, for the past several years. Some of his titles can be purchased through Amazon.com. Berner's photomontage "Dreamspaces" were used in his photo illustration and design for Uncarved Block, Unbleached Silk: The Mystery of Life (1978, A&W Visual Library, NY), a study of Zen and the sense of beauty, by Jeff's late friend, Alan Watts. Berner has taught at the historic Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design, San Francisco; at the Volcano Art Center on Hawaii's Big Island, and annually at Esalen Institute, Big Sur California, from 1990 through 2000. During that same decade he was an active high-tech and branding brainstorming consultant to Silicon Valley companies including Apple Computer, Sun Microsytems, Atari and others. He also spoke annually at Macworld Expo, San Francisco and New York. From 1965-70, he also created and conducted avant-garde art history courses, "Astronauts of Inner Space" (A Survey of the European Avant-Garde, 1880 to the present) at the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco Extension Centers (as Extension Instructor in French Culture); and at San Francisco State University's Experimental College, and in 1967 at the San Francisco Art Institute. In his spare time he created “The Lazy JB Ranch,” a miniature diorama that was exhibited for two years in the early 1990s at The Museum of Miniatures in Los Angeles, and at Paris’ only folk-art museum, Halle Saint Pierre, at the foot of Sacre Coeur, during November, 2011. His continuing avant-garde art collecting efforts include “Aktual Art International,” shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1967, as well as at The Stanford University Art Gallery that same year; and as a major part of the permanent Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota collection, “In the Spirit of Fluxus,” in 1993; and elsewhere in the USA. He lives full-time at Atelier Berner, on rue Lepic in Montmartre (Paris), with his painter wife, Azar, making occasional forays to their home in Marin County, California.