UTA BARTH
(American, born Germany, 1958)

Untitled (NW17) from "nowhere near" series, 1999
Diptych of color photographs
Edition 1/4
35 x 90" (88.9 x 228.6 cm.)
Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Sarah Norton Goodyear Fund, 1999

Untitled (aot 2), 2000
Diptych of color photographs
Edition AP1
35 x 90" (88.9 x 228.6 cm.)
Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery
Norman E. Boasberg Art Fund, 2001

“My primary project has always been in finding ways to make the viewer aware of their own activity of looking at something.”In this quote by German-born photographer Uta Barth, she concisely states her artistic intentions. By using the conventions of photography (composition, lighting, focus, depth of field, etc.) and our expectations of those conventions, Barth makes photographs that shift our attention away from what is pictured to visual perception itself.

These pairs of photographs come from two different series made between 1999 and 2000 set in the artist’s living room. The choice of her home as the subject for these series was not for any biographical purpose, but instead to use the mundane and everyday in order to remove reference and meaning. Untitled (NW 17) from the “nowhere near” series, is one of hundreds of virtually identical photographs the artist shot of the view from her living room window over a period of nine months. In each of the final series of twenty pictures, the nondescript suburban backyard is seen through the latticework of the window frame at slightly different angles and at varying times of night and day. The use of a shallow depth of field blurs the background while rendering a palpable clarity to the window’s surface.

In Untitled (aot 2) from the “…and of time” series, the artist turned her attention to the interior of the room to focus on the play of light and shadow on the bare walls and carpeted floor. In these images, as one looks from one to the other, the slight and subtle differences become apparent as the latticework of the window now produces patterns of light. The process of looking at these paired pictures results in a visual sense of silence and the passage of time.

It is hard to imagine subject matter that is less compelling than a living room floor or a bleak backyard. However, they are the perfect subjects for Barth’s explorations of perception and the impossibility of separating the “reality” of something from how it is perceived. Without narrative, chronology, or other apparent meaning, Barth’s photographs are, in the words of one curator, a “study in sameness that attempts to reduce all activity and purpose to pure observation.”

— Jennifer Bayles

Copyright © 2003 The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy