SELECTED EXCERPTS FROM CRITICAL COMMENTS

"His finest works bring to mind some of the greatest painted portraits.... The authenticity of Bergman’s art appears in the ‘hypnotic’ impact of faces that have attracted him as bearers of an unfathomable human presence, a self and a human condition. Here are masterful revelations of states of existence in the inner and outer person--truly profound works of art"
Meyer Schapiro, University Professor, Columbia University

"...works of astonishing beauty and power."
John Russell, former Chief Art Critic, The New York Times

"Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Gary Winogrand, and William Eggleston.... [Bergman] is certainly in their league."
John Yau, author The United States of Jasper Johns

"Unlike the work of his contemporaries, for example Lee Friedlander and Gary Winogrand, Bergman increasingly sought out quiet, often meditative moments that reveal the humanity of the individuals in front of his camera or the spaces they inhabit."
Sarah Greenough, Senior Curator and Head of the Department of Photographs, National Gallery of Art

"The portraits… are unlike any others in the history of photography. The faces in Robert Bergman's photographs are all so penetrating that one must spend a good deal of time looking at them to begin to realize their scope. Finally, it is difficult to identify a human emotion that is not revealed in them…. Robert Bergman is a great portraitist."
David Levi Strauss, Chair, Graduate Program in Art Criticism & Writing, New York School of Visual Arts

"... a body of work of major consequence.... They are moving, compassionate, and profound; some of them are clearly among the finest images of this century."
Alan Shestack, former Deputy Director, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

"There is an intensity here, whether of shyness, defeat, wariness, confrontation, or merely reverie, that amounts to being carried away, if only momentarily, by the vicissitudes of being human."
Vicki Goldberg, Former Photography Critic, The New York Times

"…these pictures are utterly ravishing, unforgettable. Partly that’s because Bergman operates at the dark end of the color palette, and these plates render those visions with a sensual opulence we associate with renaissance portraiture and the Dutch still-life tradition. Mostly it’s due to a sense of the sacral with which these pictures are imbued…."
A.D. Coleman, Photography in New York, International

"These are images of great visual strength and eloquence - some of the most beautiful and intriguing photographs that I have ever seen.... They seem to speak of a profound and poignant vision of life."
Samuel Sachs II, President, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York

"Radiant with color and the familiar looks of strangers.... Genuine amazing glimpses of ourselves, worthy of standing up with any of those great pictures from the past that have recorded humanity’s obsessions with the mystery of who we are and why we are here."
Richard Benson, former Dean, Department of Art and Architecture, Yale University

"Bergman’s greatness lies in his ability to capture the universal truths of everyday expression. … His art, as art and as philosophy, is at once classic and radical. It alters the terms of the contemporary photography debate and could reorder the public aesthetic."
Phong Bui, Publisher, The Brooklyn Rail

"Bergman’s camera is ever the agency of the ancient Hindu greeting: ‘The divine within me honors the divine within you’.... Bergman’s photography … reveals a depth of vision into the essential tragedy of the human condition unexcelled in portraiture - in whatever medium - in the Twentieth Century."
William La Riche, Architect and Former Director, Department of Visual Studies, Princeton University

"Robert Bergman’s book is a sermon in photographs. Like a dharma talk that is visual in nature. ... a pictorial sermon of the goal of Buddhism. …about how a certain very important aspect of awakened consciousness arises…. The images … point to a primordial simplicity."
Shinzen Young, Buddhist Monk, Founder of The Vipassana Support International

"Robert Bergman’s radiant, painterly photograph of a woman from the Rust Belt takes on the timeless irreducible look of an Old Master."
Elle Magazine

"It was as if the photographs were living and breathing and suddenly I was the one standing still. The pictures took hold of me and began to pull me into themselves, and I felt certain that here was yet another way to understand the opening words of the Gospel of John: If ‘in the beginning, was the Word,’ then these photographs might surely be interpreted as manifestations of the Word being made flesh."
Minneapolis Star Tribune

"These are people who aren’t sitting for a portrait by an artist but maybe for one by God – and Robert Bergman just happened to catch them in the act. They are like blood portraits of some deep mysteries of humanity."
The Buffalo News

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