Bio:
Nancy A. Scherl is a fine art portrait photographer based in New York City. She distinguishes between her staged portraiture series and her visual stories–the former being social commentary; the latter being social documentary. Stylistically, Nancy emulates cinema verite’ and incorporates Cartier Bresson’s ‘decisive moment.’ In her documentary work, she blurs the boundaries between pictorial, social documentary and street genres.
Scherl has exhibited globally including at FotoNostrum Mediterranean House of Photography, PX3 Espace Beaurepaire, A Smith Gallery, Praxis Gallery, Photoplace Gallery, South X Southeast, Southeast Center for Photography, The Katonah Museum of Art, The Hammond Museum and the Griffin Museum of Photography. She is a two time finalist of Photolucida Critical Mass Top 200 (2019, 2023) and is the recipient of many other awards such as: Arthur Griffin Legacy Award, International Color Awards, The Tokyo International Foto Awards, Budapest International Foto Awards, PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris, International Photography Awards, and was an Overall Winner of the Julia Margaret Cameron –The World Wide Photography Gala Awards where she had a solo show in Barcelona.
Statement:
Tibetan Buddhist monastic debate is an ancient tradition performed by Tibetan Buddhist monks. Its purpose is to establish a viewpoint conquer misconceptions and to understand the nature of reality while developing critical thinking skills.
I was impressed by the impassioned debaters and how they used theatrical gestures including the signature ‘handclap and hold’ as a total expression of their minds, body and spirit. At the end of the debate both sides shake hands with a full appreciation of the other’s point of view and for the hard work they had done to counter the challenger’s debate. I chose to apply gold leaf to these photographs, and to place each square image into an oblong book matt so they would allude to the unbound pages of Tibetan Buddhist scripture pages as well as to the gilded covers of many Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts.
