#utabarth

 uta barth ........................ in passing. (1995-7)

lithograph on paper: 137 x 128 mm, 73 x 118 mm, 137 x 128 mm. all [no title].

‘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.’ 

quoted from [Sheryl Conkelton, Russell Ferguson, Timothy Martin, Uta Barth: In Between Places, exhibition catalogue, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle 2000, pp.24-5.]

‘Barth uses photography to investigate and challenge visual perception.[She] explored the mechanisms of composition and framing central to photographic and painting traditions by eliminating the usual foreground subject and focusing instead on the more abstracted background. She intends her work to be read within the context of the conventions of image-making and has said: 'I keep trying to find ways to shift the viewer's attention away from the object they are looking at and toward their own perceptual process in relation to that object.' (Quoted in Uta Barth, p.3.)  

[...]

The unusual punctuation of the title …………………...in passing." textually recreates the sense of movement through space ending in a fragmentary encounter evoked by Barth's cropping of the images.’

from Tate

For Assignment 2, I chose to emulate the style of Uta Barth. At first sight, Barth’s photography typically seems to be the background of a usual photo. However, with a little more digging, one can see Barth’s true goal is to make people pay more attention to the difference between perception and seeing. She makes people more aware of what they are looking at by concealing and excluding objects. She uses blurring and different lighting techniques to make effortless image more complex. These techniques were quite difficult to duplicate using my smartphone. Apple iPhones have autofocus and lighting built into the camera. Also, I have an older smartphone, which doesn’t have as good of a camera.

1. For my photographer and inspiration, I chose Uta Barth. Uta Barth is a photographer like no other— she captures photographs where there is no subject or focus in the frame (which is something that usually seems to be counterintuitive when taking photos). However, Uta’s photographs are not about what is seen in the photo, it is about the act of seeing. She removes the subject so its viewers can really see what is in her photographs by eliminating all but the most abstract elements from the photo. Taking photographs in Barth’s style challenged me more than expected as it really got me to think outside the box by taking photographs that I would usually never take. I had to ensure the settings of my photographs were both anonymous yet familiar, and that really invoked a sense of thought.