Liza Hennessey Botkin - Artist Spotlight Solo Art Exhibition

Liza Hennessey Botkin is the Digital & Photography Artist Spotlight winning artist for the month of May 2019. She is an award-winning Los Angeles, California based photographer. She considers herself a street photographer and for many years, she has spent much of her time in malls documenting the preoccupation people have with shopping.

Liza’s Solo Art Exhibition will be featured on the website for the month of May 2019. The gallery will promote Liza and her work on the Fusion Art website, individual online press releases to hundreds of outlets, email blasts to over 3500+ collectors, galleries, buyers and art professionals, in online event calendars, art news websites and through the gallery’s extensive social media outlets. Fusion Art’s objective is to promote the Artist Spotlight winning artists, worldwide, to art professionals, gallerists, collectors and buyers.

Please read Liza’s Artist Statement below as she describes her history and inspiration in her own words. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see her exhibition.

If you are interested in purchasing any of these award-winning pieces, or to see more of Liza’s work, please visit her website.

Also, please visit Fusion Art’s YouTube Channel to see Liza’s Solo Art Exhibition Video.

Thank you to all the artists who participated in the Artist Spotlight competition and congratulations to Liza and the other Artist Spotlight winning artists.

Liza Botkin’s Artist Statement

I was born and raised in New York City. I graduated from The Brearley School and attended Syracuse University and Hunter College. In 1971, I moved to Los Angeles where I worked 9 to 5, mostly in the entertainment industry.

My photographic career began in the 70s when I was working for Michael Childers as his Studio Manager. One day Michael asked me if I wanted to buy a camera, a Leica CL. I did, for $80. I took a photography course at Fairfax High and was soon hanging out in the darkroom. I discovered then that I love to print.

I also worked for several years for Lou Stoumen from whom I learned a great deal about printing. We spent many hours in his darkroom making black and white magic and listening to talk radio. At home I rinky-dinked a darkroom, washed prints in my bathtub or kitchen sink and hung them to dry on window screens attached to hooks in my ceiling.

During the 70s and early 80s I roamed the streets, department stores, markets and public gatherings of L.A I entered competitions and was chosen to be in several publications and shows. In 1983, I stopped shooting, got married and went shopping. My Leica sat in a drawer for the next 15 years. In early 1998, at my husband’s urging, I brought the Leica out of the drawer, built a darkroom, and I’ve been shooting and printing ever since.

I still hang out in malls, markets and places where large groups of people tend to gather. I take my camera with me every day, shooting “from the hip” because I don’t want people to be aware of me. My camera is small enough and light enough so that I can cup it in my hand, attached to a wrist strap so I don’t drop it.

I never studied the art of making pictures in an academic setting, but if there is anyone who has influenced me or defined my work, it is Henri Cartier-Bresson. I, too, search for what he so aptly called “the decisive moment.”

I take pictures where the subjects are weirdly but humorously interacting, in moments that amuse me and make me smile when they come up in the developer. Lou Stoumen and I used to talk about what we referred to as “the nun.” Lou had a shot of Taos where there was a tiny black figure off to one side, a nun. Without her it would have been a boring shot of Taos, with her it caught your attention.

My photographic project consists of “decisive moments” and “nuns.” May they be plentiful.