……………………in passing.“, 1995-1997
Lithographs on paper, variable dimensions
Barth’s portfolio of ten images titled ……………………in passing.” was produced by waterless lithography. This is a special technique developed in the mid 1990s by Jeff Ryan of 21 Steps, Santa Fe for lens-based work. Ryan printed the portfolio on ragcote paper in an edition of thirty. It was published by Muse [X] Editions. The ten images are not individually titled and do not have a particular sequence. They are derived from photographs culled by the artist from a variety of sources. Nine are colour and one is black and white. They depict out-of-focus, outdoor backgrounds with a foreground component protruding into the edge of each composition. This is part of the original ‘subject’ of the photograph, which Barth has cropped dramatically. Only the edges of shoulders, clothed and unclothed arms, hands and faces are visible. Several of the images derive from a photograph of a woman in front of trees; in others the background is so blurred as to be unreadable. The most overtly poetic image contains part of a woman’s hand holding a cherry against a backdrop of greenery shimmering in white light. The woman’s cheekbone and part of her right eye have been cropped into the top right corner of the image. Another image consists of a fragment of text laid over a photograph of a cloudy sky. The words, only partially visible, pose a question to a viewer about 'need’ and 'want’. The frame of one image is half filled by a close-up view of a bare arm and waist, silhouetted in shadow against blue water.
The images in this series originally functioned as notes and source material for the artist. Barth has explained:
For many years now I have been collecting pictures in which the background interests me, sometimes for purely formal and compositional reasons, at other times because [of] the type of location or subject matter or even some odd relationship that occurs between background and subject. Mostly I find them in newspapers and magazines and I cut and crop out the section of interest to me and pin it to my studio wall. I have never directly recreated or reproduced any of these found pictures, but have made images based on them. Recently I have become very interested in this collection of small clippings in and of themselves … Most of them include a small section of the figure that has been cut away. They have a shoulder, a hand or part of a face at the very edge, but because of the way I have cut them, the centre of the pictures, the place we are trained to look, is now empty.
yousharknotpass
baratheonpilled
discoholicmusic
romaincrisis
stormborns
tangentwithtanner
snowghoul
