Robert Besanko

The photographs of Robert Besanko are instilled with an otherworldly, ethereal quality that is given rigour by his insistence upon pure, and simplified form. His subjects are personal, often overtly sensual, private moments, isolated, and bathed in a sepia glow. Besanko has the surprising quality of the eccentric, his vision is beauty bordering on the surreal, a dreamlike quality under-pinned by a modernist pre-occupation with form. Besanko has worked extensively using the now obsolete Kodalith paper, which imparts a characteristic textural saturation of sepia and cream tones to his photographs.

Most recently, Besanko has gone back to revisit his earlier iconic works of the 1970’s and 1980’s, experimenting with the effects of scale afforded by contemporary large-format digitisation . In his current body of work,the effects of much expanded scale upon the soft Kodalith textures, and bold forms of the original photos is explored. Robert Besanko has exhibited widely, and he has been acknowledged internationally since the 1970’s.