Desert Kitchen - Cinco, CA - Limited Edition 4 of 20 Photograph

Osceola Refetoff’s interest is in documenting humanity’s impact on the world – both the intersection of nature and industry, and the narratives of the people living at those crossroads. His images exist within traditional means – landscape, portraiture, travel, editorial – and are variously produced using film, digital, infrared, and pinhole exposures. Thus, despite his documentarian impulses and the fact that his images deliberately depict ordinary, even mundane, subjects; he trains on them a nuanced vision, often yielding surreal, even dreamlike images. His process generally happens “in camera,” at the moment of capture, in a kind of alchemical reaction that transforms the external world into something both realistic and magical. Refetoff’s early influences were the great mise-en-scène directors Lang, Welles, Kubrick, and Melville. Today, his motion picture background informs his approach to constructing visual narratives. Framing meticulous compositions in depth, he uses the many cameras he carries to render not only how a place looks, but how it feels to be there. As he shifts between stylistic modes to build layered, multidimensional histories, what links all aspects of his eclectic practice is a commitment to capturing “what the picture requires.” Refetoff holds a B.A. in Film & Mass Communications from Duke University (1985) and an M.F.A. from New York University's Graduate Film Program (1991). His photography has been featured in Artillery, Palm Springs Life, Arid, Boom, Hemispheres, and WhiteHot magazines, among others. His work is widely exhibited including at the San Diego Art Institute, the Palm Springs Art Museum, The Main Museum, Photo LA, Porch Gallery, and numerous solo exhibitions covered in The LA Times, Huffington Post, CBS, LA Weekly, and other publications. "High & Dry," a long-term collaboration with writer/historian Christopher Langley, is syndicated on KCET's Emmy-winning program Artbound, receiving the Outdoor Writers Association of California’s 2016 award for Best Outdoor Media.