"I know the cactus and have met the toad.

Their prisms of salt and helium and heat and pain keep the pace of time.

They told me we would play in pockets and ponds and blood and milk.

They know. I trust them.

Their beauty tastes of needles and venom.

The virtues of Saints."  -WmB-

* Bio

Wayne Martin Belger (b. 1964, Los Angeles) is a fine art photographer and machinist whose work examines the machinery of human nature. With a background in linguistics and comparative religion, Belger has spent more than three decades exploring how belief, power, identity, memory, and human connection are constructed, communicated, and carried through culture.

Since 1998, Belger has conceived and hand-fabricated more than eighteen subject-specific cameras, each built from blocks of metal and designed for a particular body of work. The cameras function as both photographic instruments and extensions of the artist, forming a physical and psychological bridge between maker, subject, and place. His resulting photographs and installations bring together the handmade camera, large-scale analog prints, and artifacts gathered from the communities and environments in which the work was made.

His projects have taken him across the United States and internationally, engaging subjects ranging from religion and corporate greed to HIV, migration, Indigenous sovereignty, and American gun culture. His work has been exhibited internationally and is held in permanent museum collections and private collections worldwide.

Belger lives and works in a converted 1940s diaper-washing factory in Tucson, Arizona, where the machines and the photos they create are still made by hand.