Audrey Heller

My photography draws from my background as a director and lighting designer for theatre. Since 2000, I have been a full-time artist, showing at top juried art festivals around the country, and sharing my work around the world via the web. I published my first book, “Overlooked Undertakings” in 2009. I have been published, collected, and commissioned internationally. I live and work in Berkeley, where I grew up, and where I can always get good cheese.

I feel passionate about creating community and building bridges between people, so when my pictures spark a conversation or evoke a shared smile I feel tremendous delight.

I am currently showing two very different bodies of work:

Linger: taking a long look at light - These images are all single, long exposures. I move the camera with my gaze, capturing many views and blurring the boundaries of them all. The subjects are simultaneously revealed and obscured in this process, replicating the feeling of movement and breath that I experienced in the moment.

Overlooked Undertakings- The fantasy of being tiny in a giant environment is universally compelling. Whether it is interpreted playfully, politically or spiritually, we have all had some experience of feeling minuscule compared to our surroundings or our challenges. I create mixed-scale scenarios, using the disorientation that results from these surreal scenes to draw attention to the beauty and power of everyday objects and daily interactions. I encourage people to see things that they might otherwise overlook. I have exhibited this series since 1996, when I made my first nerve-racking public appearances on the walls of San Francisco coffee shops.