Barbara Ess was born in Brooklyn, NY and she studied English and Philosophy at the University of Michigan, before attending Film school in London, where she began making experimental films. When she returned to NY she became involved with music performance, and making artists' books and photographs.
Barbara Ess is known primarily for her large-scale ambient and shadowy photographs that are most oftenly made with a pinhole camera and were shown internationally in solo or group exhibitions and reviewed extensively. Her prints are intentionally left unclear and unresolved. As such, they initiate a range of emotions from dream anxiety and helplessness, to being captivated by a fantasy. Her prints can go back to the nineteenth-century approach to fine-art photography known as Pictorialism and to the well-known amateur photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. The Pictorialists and creating tableau vivant imagery that evoked moody, open-ended narratives. She says that her intention as a photographer is to 'Photograph what cannot be photographed'.
Over the last twenty years there have been numerous exhibitions of her work throughout the United States and Europe, as well as Japan and Australia including solo shows at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, etc. Her work has been in collections of Modern Art, and she currently teaches photography at Bard College.
The main subject of the image is the hands and they are placed in more or less in the centre of the frame. There seems to be a bright light creating some shadows and you as you can ee the image doesn't seem to be in great focus however, I really like the effect of the red light. The feeling seems quite dark and mysterious and I think its very interesting.
Barbara Ess is known primarily for her large-scale ambient and shadowy photographs that are most oftenly made with a pinhole camera and were shown internationally in solo or group exhibitions and reviewed extensively. Her prints are intentionally left unclear and unresolved. As such, they initiate a range of emotions from dream anxiety and helplessness, to being captivated by a fantasy. Her prints can go back to the nineteenth-century approach to fine-art photography known as Pictorialism and to the well-known amateur photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. The Pictorialists and creating tableau vivant imagery that evoked moody, open-ended narratives. She says that her intention as a photographer is to 'Photograph what cannot be photographed'.
Over the last twenty years there have been numerous exhibitions of her work throughout the United States and Europe, as well as Japan and Australia including solo shows at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, etc. Her work has been in collections of Modern Art, and she currently teaches photography at Bard College.
The main subject of the image is the hands and they are placed in more or less in the centre of the frame. There seems to be a bright light creating some shadows and you as you can ee the image doesn't seem to be in great focus however, I really like the effect of the red light. The feeling seems quite dark and mysterious and I think its very interesting.
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