Jerry Berndt

Background

Jerry Berndt was born in 1943 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States.

Education

Berndt attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison 1963-67.

Career

A photography instructor at the Art Institute of Boston (since 1977), he was previously photography editor for the Boston Phoenix (1975-78). During that time he regularly had his photos published in Time, Newsweek, Village Voice and Rolling Stone. He was also staff photographer for the Detroit Free Press (1973) and photography editor for the Detroit Area Weekly News (1970-72). Berndt photographed the "Combat Zone" in Boston in 1968-70 for the Harvard University Laboratory of Community Psychiatry. From 1967 to 1969 he worked as a photographer and film maker for the Boston Children's Museum.

Since 1978 Berndt has belonged to the Boston Visual Artists Union and the Photographic Resource Center. He won a Kosciusko Foundation grant to photograph in Poland in 1976, and was awarded a Massachusetts Artists Foundation Fellowship in 1979. In 1980 Berndt was awarded a NEA Survey Project Fellowship.

Berndt has also made several 16mm films: Forestry Camp (1976, for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts), The Kid (1970, for the Boston Public Library), The Weatherman (1968, for the Boston Children's Museum) and The Green Berets (1967).

Achievements

• COLLECTIONS Boston Mus. of Fine Arts; Boston Pub. Lib.; Harvard Univ., Lab. of Community Psychiatry; Kosciusko Fndn., NYC; Univ. of Wise., Madison. Univ. of Warsaw, Poland.

Interests

• He named Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Eugene Atget and Erich Saloman as major influences.