Most photographers pride themselves on how sharp an image is, but Uta Barth and Hiroshi Sugimoto create thought provoking bodies of work by doing the opposite.
Uta Barth’s color photographs from the series “Grounds” (Adbusters, 2003) provide numerous examples of her soft focus approach. In one of her images, the photograph just catches a glimpse of the edge of a windowsill with a curtain draped over its ledge. Blurred but clear enough to reveal the shapes and forms as identifiable, the small unframed mounted image seems to drift toward nothing in particular. It reminds one of the quite moment just before sleep when one gives up on focusing. Muted color tones reinforce the sense of calm in the image by their understated presence.
Another image from that series is a soft focus shot of a green wall with two small framed art reproductions hanging in the upper left, a fragment of a dresser in the bottom right. The prints hanging on the wall are reproductions by Vermeer, but are only generally alluded to since it becomes less identifiable in the photographic print. As the viewer stares at the soft image, a self-consciousness of “looking” is what tends to emerge.
Hiroshi Sugimoto’ architectural studies, created between 1997-2002, purposefully utilize blur. By setting his large format focal length to twice infinity (!), he searches for “…superlative architecture [which can] survive the onslaught of blurred photography”. (Sugimoto, 2006) One example of such work is an approximately four foot by five foot very blurred black and white image of the World Trade Center. Rather than irritating the viewer with a soft focus effect, Sugimoto manages to create a minimalist, engaging charcoal-like study of forms and monochromatic tones. Not a piece of Sugimoto’s compositions are wasted.
The image of Villa Savoye feels like a future Jetson-esque world yet to be realized. The hazy structure rises on its own legs into a sky of ever deepening tones of grey. The grass below becomes smudged by it’s own lack of specificity or focus. This piece, typical of Sugimoto’s work, challenges the viewer to see in an unfussy way.
Both Barth and Sugimoto’s images are compelling but for different reasons. Barth’s color images are disorientating and disquieting. One recognizes the spaces, sort of, but they seem to be the background of another subject about to step into the frame. As a result, we are somewhat self-conscious of the passing of time as we stare at her images. Her work also imparts a psychological dimension because of the vague familiarity of place. By contrast, Sugimoto’s formalist studies of monumental structures defy physics as one watches them seemingly disseminate in our midst. There is an “all-over” quality to his work that gives no more sense of importance to any other part of the composition. For instance, famous structure is equally as important as sky, as grass, as whatever is in the frame. While Barths’ work is about nowhere in particular Sugimoto’s is about the particular.
But regardless of intent or subject matter both artists manage to push us into a new place of blurred form rich in possibilities and meaning.
-Michel Varisco
Bibliography:
Uta Barth. essays by: Pamela M Lee, Matthew Higgs, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe.New York: Phaidon Press, 2004
www.phaidon.com/Default.aspx/Web/uta-barth-9780714841533
Hiroshi Sugimoto. Designed by Takaaki Matsumoto, essays by: Kerry Brougher and David Elliott,
Washington D.C. and Tokyo: Hirshorn Museum, Sculpture garden, the Smithsonian and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2007. hirshhorn.si.edu/sugimoto/programs.htm
Image samples:
www.artsjournal.com/man/images/Chrysler.jpg
web.ncf.ca/ek867/sugimoto.wtc.jpg
www.edwardmitterrand.com
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