Balarama Heller

In a project spanning the course of a few years, Balarama Heller documented his search for the elusive and invasive Burmese Python in the Florida Everglades in a surreal, tense, and poetic set of photographs. This image freezes guide and enthusiast Nick Bishop's encounter.

Balarama Heller lives and works in New York City. His practice reimagines archetypal symbols found in the natural world. He explores primal symbols and patterns, both real and imagined, working towards a visual language of preverbal awareness. These symbols interact in a ceaseless cycle of creation and destruction, referencing the cosmological and atomic scale. Informed by visual models of the universe and new-age pseudoscience, the images evoke a dream-like quality.

Heller lived in Istanbul, photographing long-form projects concerning ritual and transcendence in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Heller resettled in New York City in 2010. Recent group shows include ​Maelstrom​, at 303 Gallery, New York, ​You Can't Win, Jack Black's America curated by Randy Kennedy at Fortnight Institute, ​What's Outside the Window at ReadingRoom, Melbourne AU, Agnes B New York, New Artists at Red Hook Labs and the 2015 Aperture Summer Open. In 2014, he published his first artist book, ​Into and Through.​ ​Zero at the Bone received 1st place for the 2017 Center Awards Editor’s Choice and runner-up for the 2017 Aperture Portfolio Prize. His 2019 project ​Sacred Place​ was featured in Aperture Magazine issue 241, with text by Pico Iyer.