KAREN BELLONE

With her unique eye and singular vision, Karen Bellone has been on a journey of self-discovery and exploration that has taken her through the evolving landscape of popular and not-so-popular culture. Her film work, both still and moving, has captured haunting and tremulous moments in our recent history, and furthered her desire to document our continuing evolution.

After receiving a BFA from NYU Film School, Karen got her Masters Degree from the New School for Social Research as a director in the inaugural class of the Actors Studio Program. Her dual paths in film and still photography led to her shooting stills for many film and television projects, including the inaugural season of Inside The Actors Studio. It also led to her work in the 80s and early 90s, riding the tidal wave of the music video boom. She founded an award-winning production company Bell One Productions, and produced and/or directed videos for some of the premiere artists of this era including Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Billy Joel, Elton John, and many more. Commercials followed, with ads for Abercrombie and Fitch and Barneys New York among countless others.

In the 90s she turned her attention to more personal and socially conscious topics. She was involved in documentaries that tackled child abuse, cancer, the struggle of the performance artist, animal cruelty, and her most difficult and personal project, Death by Unnatural Causes, an experimental film about AIDS, which traveled the world on the festival circuit, with stops at Sundance, Berlin, Chicago, Cork, London, Melbourne, and more.

Simultaneously, she kept her camera close by and managed to capture sleek and haunting images which she included in her collection Postcards from the End of the 20th Century. With shows at prestigious galleries across the US and Europe, Karen’s still photography has provided a rare window into her search for the American identity and the truth of the American myth as the 20th century gave way to today.