Vincent Serbin

Vincent Serbin (born 1955) is an American photographer and mixed‑media artist whose experimental darkroom techniques and painterly sensibility have defined a singular practice over three decades. Raised in the New York area, he studied fine art before opening his own studio, where he began combining traditional black‑and‑white photography with collage, drawing, and hand‑toning to forge dense, multilayered images.

Serbin constructs each photograph by combining three to four cut or torn negatives—sometimes etched, doodled, or annotated by hand—into a single “master negative.” He then employs a proprietary toning process, layering selenium, sepia, and bleach to achieve a distinctive “speckled” surface texture. Around 2018, Serbin began repurposing expired darkroom paper with gesso primers, expanding into oil painting on archival photographic substrates—a hybrid approach that echoes the gestural energy of De Kooning and Diebenkorn.

A 2000 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship recipient, Serbin has exhibited his work in galleries and museums nationwide for more than 25 years. His photographs and oils have been featured in the Journal of Contemporary Photography, Zoom International, PhotoMetro SF, The Photographer’s Forum, The Photo Review, and Black & White Magazine. Now based in upstate New York, he continues to push the boundaries of image‑making, transforming the darkroom into a studio of layered narratives and painterly abstraction.