Uta Barth
Uta Barth is a temporary German – American photographer whose work addresses themes such as perception, illusion, and non-place. In the mid-90’s her series ‘field and ground’ bought her international acclaim. This led her to present another series featuring views looking out windows of her home into Los Angeles streets at different times of day in separate weather conditions. She is widely known for her blur used in photos involving a lot of bokeh formed by the play of light. Her earliest work emerged in the late 1980’s and 1990’s, bringing awareness to a viewer’s attention to visual information in the photographic frame. Her work is very much about the failure to see, and it's down to our perception of the image itself. She said herself, “The question for me always is how can I make you aware of your own looking, instead of losing your attention to thoughts about what it is that you are looking at." – informing us that you may see something different to someone else through the blur. Uta’s work looks very calm and quiet, almost like a glance frozen in time. A lot of themes reoccurring in her work are things like blank walls, curtains, window panes, and blurred street scenes which are supposedly mundane subjects which become elevated under Barth’s focus. She tends to make diptychs which usually include two very similar images with slightly different positions or an added element.
Here is an example of some of Uta Barth's work. This here is a diptych which is where two images are combined into a single frame or presented together, they tend to be similar and often compliment each other. Here, Barth is showing slight movement - the first one is slightly further away from the subject (house), however the second image is slightly closer/zoomed in. I find the window interesting how it changes shape completely, from a circular shape to a square in the second image - which shows how making an image out of focus can create such an illusion and change your perspective completely. Furthermore I love the use of bokeh in her work which can be seen slightly in the background of these photos - which occurs when light turns into soft circles when using a wider aperture. To me, Barth's work looks very soft and quiet which opens the imagination, giving each viewer the opportunity to interpret it however they like - you aren't given a clear picture, therefore you see it in your own way, and this is what interests me in Barth's technique.
I decided to look at some magazines and found an article on Uta Barth, showing one of her photographic series, 'Sundial', presented in an exhibition. It says in the article that she created her project around her home in Los Angeles - which adds to the soft element to her photos, knowing they were taken in a comfortable setting. She was taking the majority of these during sun sets and 'golden hour', using the sunlight to romanticize her work. furthermore it goes on to say that she, ' expressively rejects such melancholic associations, but should rather be read as part of her continued research into the nature of visual indifference.'
