Osceola Refetoff's images are produced using film, digital, infrared, and pinhole exposures, according to what best expresses the character of his subjects. 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.
A graduate of New York University's MFA Film Program, Refetoff's motion picture background informs his cinematic approach to constructing visual narratives. His process typically 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. His environmental photojournalism is regularly featured on PBS SoCal's multi-Emmy-winning program Artbound, and in The Guardian, The New York Times, and The New Republic, earning Los Angeles Press Club awards for Best Photo Essay (2018, 2019,2020) and Photojournalist of the Year (2018). The desert window series It's a Mess Without You is The British Journal of Photography's OpenWalls Arles 2020 Outstanding Series Winner and was exhibited this summer at Von Lintel Gallery in Los Angeles, California.