Alexia Beckerling - an eye for contrast

Alexia Beckerling's photography has taken her all over the world. Her images of Tibetan refugee nuns in Dharamsala, India capture their open hearts - we see their playful smiles and bright eyes, but we also see the intensity and the internal focus of their Buddhist practice.

Her photos of Helmville, Mont. show both the town's geographic isolation and it's sense of community.

Her images of the South African amaMpondo tribe's religious ceremony capture solemn moments as well as the heat and intensity of their dance.

Beckerling's photo sets have a storyteller's motion that comes from her ability to build contrast and contradiction into them. This quality, and perhaps her background in the art world, give her photos an added dimension.

She's hoping to combine her experience working for art galleries in New York and her native South Africa with her photojournalism background to produce multimedia profiles of South African artists. Galleries would show the profiles along with the artist's work, giving patrons insight into the art and the creative process that went into it.

The galleries would increase sales, the artist would get exposure, and Beckerling would get paid. "The way we are going to survive," she says, "is to apply ourselves to the commercial world."

She's back in South Africa after spending eight years in the U.S. getting master's degrees in art history and photojournalism. In that time, she's also worked in art galleries in New York and taught photography in Montana.

Beckerling feels that the artist profiles might be her niche. Her background makes her comfortable talking to artists, and she enjoys listening to them talk about their passion.

"American artists can talk for hours," she says, and that makes the work easier. South African artists are, in general, more reticent, she says, perhaps making her work all the more valuable.

She says she'll miss Montana, but she wonders if she could ever be truly happy in a country that wasn't her own.

Talking about South Africa, she says, "I know how the mountains look. It's a weird thing to say, I know, but that's what I would think of when I was homesick."

Beckerling's profile of printmaker John Armstrong is available here. Some of her photo sets can be viewed on her Lightstalker page. The Missoula Art Museum's curator hopes to exhibit the Helmville photos by mid-July.