Neil Berkowitz
Seattle, Washington
Neil Berkowitz resumed a long dormant fine art photography practice in 2017 and now works in two dimensional, time-based, and interactive media.
Message37" x 15" multilayer photographic archival pigment print on 310 gsm matte photorag paper, mounted onto 50" x 25" fringed, handmade Thai mulberry paper featuring string and water dimples. Variable edition of 6. The text layer, a poem of mine about sleeping under the interstate, is fully readable only with effort on the part of the viewer:
White Noise
Listen to the rain inviting you to sleep,
stealing me from mine, a mean yet petty theft.
Rains regroup, infiltrating my underpass,
Soaking up the fumes and poisons of your easy journeys,
each rivulet a promise of cleansing misplaced,
god’s spectacle of careless tears, flooding my refuge
and rending dryness from my waking world.
Rock, paper, scissors, water.
I once won your eldest daughter.
Throw back the corner of your comforter.
The coolness of the rain proves balance in your universe,
a counter to near, warm breath, communion distilled unto space itself,
comingling with the musty sweetness of the month’s first rain.
I know it’s not the last. Many more will come.
Paper, scissors, water, rock.
I know no place where I can dock.
We do not sleep as you do.
The luxuries of the commonplace did not pass to us.
You revel in the sense.
Not revel? Simple pleasure or faint awareness—
It is all the same to me. Not fearing is enough.
Not fouled. Not bleeding and not bled.
Not going from wet to damp to wet again.
Not dissolving.
I am rich only in irretrievable loss.
Scissors, water, rock, paper.
I know no dreams that are not vapor.
We, like you, do sleep a sleep shallow and full deep,
where dreams might reach, yet echoes fill our keep.
Exhibition History
© 2026 Neil Berkowitz