Uta Barth

by Matthew Higgs, Pamela M. Lee, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe

German-born, American-based artist Uta Barth (b.1958) is among the key recent figures who have brought photography to the prominent position once occupied by painting. Her photographs of interior and exterior, urban and natural environments capture fleeting moments as if glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye, where we become aware of the beauty of everyday light, space, texture and luminous surfaces. Working in broad series, each body of work explores different details of our surroundings, such as the corner of a room ( Ground #38 , 1994), the headlights of a passing car ( Field #3 , 1995), bare trees seen through a window ( white blind [bright red] , 2002). A kind of 'portrait photography, but with the sitter removed', Barth's work focuses not on the subject of the photograph, but on the subtle play of light and shade on planes and that is, the phenomena of vision itself. Often one element, such as a few leaves on a branch, is brought into focus while all else is dissolved and diffused, suggesting the atmospheric work of painters of the past, from Vermeer to Turner, or suggesting the background ambience of film. Barth's work has been exhibited at museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

In her Survey, Pamela M. Lee examines all the key series that have marked the artist's work, among them Ground (1994-7), Field (1995-6), nowhere near (1999), ... and of time (2000) and white blind (bright red) (2002). In the Interview curator Matthew Higgs discusses the artist's earliest introduction to photography and her work's possible misinterpretations as 'sentimental' or 'painterly'. Artist and critic Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe focuses on the three-panel work Untitled 98.5 (1998), a turning point in her oeuvre. For her Artist's Choice Barth has selected extracts from Joan Didion's novel Democracy (1984) that reflect the visual nuances of her own work. Artist's Writings include a new text by the artist that mirrors her unique observations on vision, perception and photography.

Genres: Photography, Art, Art and Photography, Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 5 out of 5]

I look at something from the Ground series and the pressure of having to "interpret" art blows out with a huge, long-suffering hiss, an extended deflation.

I am pacified by the photographic analog to breathing; more specifically, to the self-awareness that arises simply by focusing on the act of breathing. Thus, the images are a photographic means to mindfulness: "I think that the work invests in ideas about time, stillness, inactivity and non-event, not as something threatening or numbing, but as something actually to be embraced. There is a certain desire to embrace that which is completely incidental, peripheral, atmospheric and totally unhinged."

Also: "This kind of questioning and reorientation is the point of entry and discovery, not only in a cognitive way, but in a most visceral, physical, and personal sense. Everything is pointing to one's own activity of looking, to an awareness and sort of hyper-consciousness of visual perception. The only way I know how to invite this experience is by removing the other things (i.e., subject matter) for you to think about."

Barth's commentary about her work is consistent with the "indefinite, roaming focus" likely during meditative practice. For example: "Barth wants her photography to be about looking at without looking for - as she puts it, 'looking that's not motivated by subject matter...' Specifically, [the camera] is unsuited to the indeterminate sense of temporal duration associated with the unmotivated gaze. Its lens may work in technical ways like the eye, but its fixed viewpoint does not resemble the mind."

In addition: "I value confusion, a certain kind of confusion that resolves visual and spatial ambiguity."

[Catherine Corman · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Austere" is the word that I think I would associate with my memories.

-Uta Barth

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely.