I Smell a Rat Photograph

Jessica Berkowitz graduated with a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. While pursuing a master's in fine art she began building dollhouse structures instead of photographing figures in full-scale sets to ease the process while in the constraints of a full-time program. She found she enjoyed both the freedom of concept and control of the environment this allowed. The process of creating spaces satisfied her desire to work with her hands and the real environment created a unique final image from the works she was creating in the digital realm. Deciding to explore a different route than digitally inserting the figure into the works, she found herself injecting human characteristics into the work in a new way by beginning the series, "Tiny Situations", which explores the effects of social groups on human behavior. Most of Berkowitz's work remains in 1:12 scale and her process ranges from digital to large format, pinhole to cyanotype. Jessica took a hiatus from her studio work when her daughter was born in 2017 and has slowly been returning to the studio to share new outlooks on life and society.