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Flowers evoke beauty, hope, and new life. In Touch welcomes
spring and summer with a look at lives inspired by flowers.
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Riva Berkovitz
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Stepping into the tenth-floor Beacon Street apartment/artist’s studio is a visual delight. Light and slopes of Brookline hills embrace the windows from the outside like a sculpture. Evidence of a lifetime of loving art abounds. Tendrils, squiggles, leaves, and blooms – the artist’s favorite subjects – dance around the space. These lovely flowers and potted plants in Riva Berkovitz’s home catch the eye. But Berkovitz’s photographs of them dazzle. They are a revelation of form, beauty, and the art of macro photography. Her recent exhibit at Goddard House in Brookline prompted In Touch to learn what inspired Riva to buy her first camera just several years ago, close to her eightieth birthday:
“I had enrolled in a drawing class at the Brookline Senior Center. I was at Griggs Park, which is like sitting in a painting itself, trying to capture the landscape but just could not. Frustrated, I thought to myself, I bet I could photograph it – and resolved to buy a camera. Early on, I was cropping a photo of a flower taken with that first Canon A510. Pow! The flower just popped out of the computer in a way that I had never seen, as an abstract image. That was it! I was amazed by what I began to see.
Growing up in a family of professional photographers in Chicago influenced me, but I never had taken pictures myself. As for flowers, I never paid much attention to them or had them around the house. Now, it’s kind of a joke because I can’t be without them. I quickly moved on to an Olympus DSLR camera that I use with a macro lens, a special lens to take close-ups. Photographing flowers everywhere and every day is now part of the rhythm of my life – here at home, at my dentist’s office, at parks, florists, and greenhouses. It has changed the way I see and experience them. It has transformed my life.
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Riva Berkovitz
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My daughter hosted a show of my work in Chicago. The next day I got a call from a New York Times reporter who wanted to interview me about macro photography. Exciting! Just recently, I received the only jurors’ award for photography at the Brookline Art Center exhibit of works created at the Minot Rose Garden. It was for one of my favorite photographs – a cluster of roses, some in full bloom, others old. After the death of a very close friend, I began to photograph old flowers. They are so evocative of the entirety of our life cycle and that has great meaning to me.
Inspired by artists like Cézanne, Rothko, Picasso, Klimt, and Turner, I’ve always had a great appreciation for art but never thought I might become an artist like this. What’s my favorite flower? I love anemones! So much is revealed in them. I photograph simply because of the beauty of it all – making the journey to discover flowers with my imagination, my camera, and my computer.”
www.rivaberkovitz.com
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