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Osceola Refetoff’s images exist within traditional means – landscape, portraiture, editorial – and are variously produced using film, digital, infrared, and pinhole exposures, according to what best expresses the character of his subjects. Thus, despite his documentarian impulses and the fact that his images deliberately depict quite ordinary, even mundane, subjects, he trains on them a hyper-realistic and nuanced vision, often yielding surreal, even dreamlike images. His process generally happens “in camera,” at the moment of capture, in a kind of alchemical reaction that transforms the external world into something both unchanged and extraordinary, realistic and magical.
Refetoff was born in Montreal. He now lives and works in Los Angeles. Since 1995, his work has been widely exhibited, including institutions like the San Diego Art Institute, Palm Springs Art Museum and Museo Area Archeologica Arte Contemporaena (Italy), and regularly reviewed in publications such as Artillery, The Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, and The British Journal of Photography.