At the age of twenty three, Assaf Reznik left his home in Israel and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1989 with a an undergraduate degree in computer science.

Reznik took a semester off during his senior year to travel around the world for nine months, photographing nature and indigenous cultures. Unbeknownst to him, this trip would later prove as the turning point in Reznik’s professional career.

He says, “I fell in love with the technical aspects of the camera, the process and my subjects. When I returned to U.C. Berkeley, I was sort of in a crisis. I had a hard time because of what I had just experienced with indigenous people and my communion with nature. I had no idea what these had in common with the artificial world of computers.”

The following nine years, Reznik would gain employment with distinguished bay area multimedia companies such as Lucas Arts, McGraw Hill Home Interactive, Pixel Multimedia and Ziff Davis while he furthered his interests in photography studies at City College of San Francisco.

During his years in the bay area, Reznik also shot photos for several newspapers, including The Guardsman in San Francisco, Chrome and Maariv in Tel Aviv, where he photographed Irving Yalom, author of When Nietzsche Wept.

Shortly after his first exhibition at City Arts Gallery in San Francisco, Reznik moved to Taos, NM where he debut his first solo exhibition, Duality to Unity, in 1999. A multi-disciplinary performance that accompanied the exhibit also led to his first short movie, which he produced in collaboration with photo-realistic embroidery artist Mical Aloni. His solo exhibition led to exhibits at The Parks Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico and the Palos Verdes Art Center.

Since 2001, Assaf has been collaborating with Aloni. Their unique art form, photo-embroidery, features under the pseudonym M.A. Rezoni, and is also shown at Horizons Gallery in Taos.

Reznik never had a mentor; his art is the result of self-discipline. Drawn to the mystique and the essence of the people he photographs, Reznik’s images offer a fresh visual expression. Using a unique combination of photography and darkroom techniques, Reznik layers projected images to transform tangible reality of the human body into a spiritual expression.

“Color is a wavelength; it’s physics. You get the vibration of the people and the places—that’s how I experience photography,” he adds.

His work is currently displayed at Horizons Gallery in Taos.

Reznik and Aloni's honeymoon in Baja California was the source material for their opening exhibit, The Honeymoon Album: Impressions of Baja California, of the Aloni Reznik Studio in Taos, NM.