BARBARA ESS A PHILOSOPHY OF PHOTOGRAPHY II
JANUARY 18 – FEBRUARY 29, 2020
F is pleased to announce A Philosophy of Photography II, a solo exhibition by Barbara Ess alongside Return to Sender, a solo exhibition by Megan Plunkett. First conceived as a two-person show, the exhibition developed into two discrete and separately titled solo exhibitions in adjacent spaces. When I first proposed the show to Ess she asked me, “Why are you putting us together?” “Well,” I began, “you are both photographers—” Ess fired back, “I’m not a photographer.”
Barbara Ess’ A Philosophy of Photography II is comprised of four artworks that make use of, mock, and flirt with the meaning of the photographic picture plane. The artworks are:
1) An archival inkjet print from a scan of a manila folder Ess found at a yard sale, containing trace images of a 4x5 negative and used Polaroid paper, burned into the folder either by time or the sun
2) An archival inkjet print from a scan of a desiccated frog found in the corner of her studio at an artist residency
3) An archival inkjet print of a photograph of the surface of her kitchen table, and a graphite rubbing of the same table, presented as a diptych, and
4) A ribbon and an archival inkjet print from a scan of a point and shoot digital camera with the viewer showing a photo of a photo (of a girl and a woman, the girl with a bow in her hair) found at a Berlin flea market in 2007.
To make these artworks, the main photographic apparatus Ess employed was a digital scanner, making direct recordings of objects. She also used a camera to photograph a surface; in one of the images, a camera appears as an object. There is a ribbon, a found object presented as such; there is a rubbing. In her notes for the works, some locations are given for the objects’ origins, when they came to be in Ess’ possession, how they ended up captured in these artworks. The dates for the works indicate that these artworks accrued over time, over years, not with a camera’s quick capture. An elegant cyclical logic snakes through these deceptively simple-seeming pictures. Each is a layered riddle, the group a series of essays on photography, such as After Maxwell’s Ribbon (2014/2016):
The camera lies on the scanner bed, the viewer against the glass showing a photo, with the dark depth of a fabric above covering the rest of the scanner. The photo displayed on the viewer is of a re-photographed found photo, found in Berlin in 2007. The viewer of the digital camera tells us the newer photo was taken on 3/13/14. Behind the glass of this artwork, inside the frame, Ess has placed a plaid ribbon tied in a bow, and the plaid very nearly matches the ribbon worn in the hair of the girl (is it a bow in her hair? Is it plaid? The girl and the woman are wearing plaid dresses too) in the original re-photographed photo. Ess’ bow is flattened against the photographic print and from any distance the artwork reads as a trompe l’oeil tableau. The photographic print reads as black and white (the re-photographed photo is black and white) but for the details of the camera’s colored buttons, and this is in contrast with the color of the real bow; the title refers to what is considered the first reported color photograph, taken by James Clerk Maxwell in 1861.
Barbara Ess is an artist and musician living in New York. She has exhibited her work extensively, all over the world, for four decades. Her work is in numerous permanent collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Walker Art Center, and The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. She is an Associate Professor of Photography at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.
Works in exhibition:
Kitchen Table
2018
Left: Graphite on paper
11 x 8.5 inches
Right: Archival inkjet print
11 x 8.5 inches
Unique
Desiccated Frog
2012/2018
Archival inkjet print
11 x 8.5 inches
AP
Negative and Polaroid Shadow
2016/2019
Archival inkjet print
11 x 8.5 inches
AP
After Maxwell’s Ribbon
2014/2016
Ribbon and archival inkjet print in custom frame
11 x 8.5 inches
Unique
F
4225 Gibson Street
Houston TX 77007
For more information, please contact Adam Marnie at office@fmagazine.info