William Berry makes digitally altered photographs with the skill of an auteur. He has been a director, cinematographer and editor who now takes still pictures much like he is making a feature narrative film.  He starts with extensive research on locations and situations that reflect the impact of human occupation on earth and the detritus left behind. A constant traveler, he uses his research to find the site or will just happen upon it.  Berry then takes multiple exposures as if to recreate the scene in a diorama.  He combines these multiple points of view in a single meticulously crafted photograph by using the latest, state-of-the-art digital technology, thus creating a seamless experience of viewing that eerily simulates in one “take” the cinematic pans and special effect transitions that are evidenced in entertainment media.  Berry acknowledges that one of the specificities of digital technology is to create a more idealized perfection of the image—an artificial or hyper-real reality.  By taking photographic documentation of a site that is uncannily real and then making it hyper-real, he de-emphasizes the question of what is artificial and real

To date, Berry has created several bodies of work exploring ethnographic vistas such as airplane graveyards in the Mohave Desert, cemeteries in Peru, an active volcanic beach in Italy, motor home graveyards in Jacumba, California, sexy champagne fights at Nikki beach in St. Tropez, massive land excavations in rural China, the squatter civilization in slab city and Salvation Mountain in the Salton Sea.  Berry's work thus represents iconic ideas about the ideal place, the perfect moment, linking them to the history of photography while using digital technology as a new way of representation, as a means of transforming a physical and psychological experience of a place.

Born in West Frankfort, Illinois in 1945, William Berry has lived in Los Angeles since 1977 when he came west to study directing and screenwriting at the American Film Institute.  For the past thirty years he has used his multiple talents working in film and television as a screenwriter, director, editor and music producer.  Previously, he lived in the Washington D.C. area where he studied photography, filmmaking and painting at the Corcoran School of Art, and made commercial documentaries for such respected institutions as USIA, National Geographic and the Smithsonian Institute.  Berry was born in the coal mining community of Southern Illinois.  After his father joined the Foreign Service as an African specialist, Berry spent most of his childhood traveling throughout Europe and Africa, an experience that continues to influence his work.