The photographer I chose to blog about this week is also one I chose to do my "Place" presentation on. Uta Barth is a contemporary photographer. She was born in Berlin, but now lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Most of her photographs are out of focus or oddly framed. Such experimentation with this depth of field, framing and use of being in and out of focus is consistent throughout her work.
Much like we discussed in class, perhaps the reason why many of her shots are out of focus was to take emphasis away from what was actually in the shot and put more emphasis on the space between. Air. It's in every picture we've ever seen, but no one ever suggests it. That's what makes Uta Barth's work less descriptive and more suggestive. It's a very interesting twist on photography because our eyes are so accustomed to seeing exactly what the picture represents. Little do we think to focus on the what can't be seen.
Another topic we discussed was the passage of time. I love how she represents that in some of her diptychs; this one in particular. Sure, it's just a picture of shadow and light, but it also represents movement and maybe even touches on the notion that all things are ephemeral. That's how this particular work makes me feel as well as the first photo at the top. Things just pass on by. It's just a matter of time until they've passed and gone on to someplace else.
It took a bit of time to grasp some of the things Uta Barth is trying to communicate with her viewers, but once I understood it a little bit more, I really began to like her work more and more, and actually came to appreciate it. Too often I just look at a photograph and think, "Man, there's nothing to this. What's the point?" But maybe if I, or we, could dig more into the thoughts and concepts of these artists, we could also gain something from their very own mindset. I really like that.
I really enjoyed learning about this photographer. Her work is very visually intriguing. In class we discussed her specific methods (blurred, out of focus scenes, obscurely aligned/positioned subjects), and I believe they are her unique way of catching the viewer's attention. The blurred vision forces your mind to keep looking, desperate to figure out what is there. The significance of oddly orientating subjects in the frame of the photo could be to achieve something similar. Just like the rule of three, our eyes and minds are more and less attracted to objects depending on how they are positioned.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I really appreciate Barth's color scheme in most of her photographs. The pastels really appeal to me, and I think it works well with blurriness- it helps keep the light and airy/ soft and fuzzy feel.
Her work really intrigued me as well. At first I appreciated the color palate like you say, and their uniqueness in formality. It also as the viewer, part of me felt a sense of frustration to not be able to decipher the content. However, that is seen in a different way when I learned in class that she was photographic 'the space between' I thought that is a crazy idea, it is so interesting, it just makes you think in ways that one doesn't usually think. Its about making tangible what we don't consider from our vision.
ReplyDeleteYeas, that "space between" idea is really meditative. But when you throw a camera out of focus, essentially, that's what your are photographing. Its just that there's nothing to define or anchor it.
ReplyDeleteThe comments about color are also important. Like the "rule of thirds" that April mentioned (which is essentially a template for culturally defined design preferences -- and which has been used, challenged, rejected by many artists), colors are capable of playing a most important role in a photograph -- sometimes functioning formally (for example warm colors advancing, cool colors receding) or sometimes functioning as the emotional subject. How often do we associate colors with moods... blue=sad, red=passion, green=envy and so on...
But color can also be the curse of a photograph because it ties the image to the literal. B&W has the advantage of creating an instant abstraction -- because it removes such a significant realm of our visual experience.
What makes it challenging to work with color in photography (at least the straight variety) is that we are dealing with color as it is presented to us. Its not like we have a palette of paints within easy reach. But we do have our colorful visual experiences to choose from. We select our visual experiences to be photographs if/when we recognize their *significance*. And *sometimes* we get it right!