Val Telberg

Who was Val Telberg?

Val Telberg was a Russian painter. He lived in China during his youth. He studied painting at the Art Student's League, New York, in 1942, where he was exposed to the surrealism movement and experimental film-making. To support his painting, Telberg traveled from Florida to Massachusetts, printing photographs of nightclub patrons and working at photographic concession stands where people posed with cutouts of celebrities. In 1945, he returned to New York and produced narrative, surrealist photographs using sandwiched, bleached or burned negatives and double exposure within the camera. His later work evolved to large scale, scroll-like multiple images.