Daniel Potes - Artist of the week

Uta Barth

Barth uses play on both depth of field and motion blur to create blurry yet bright images that contain no specific subject. Instead, her images contain a field of colors blanketed together in a soft yet strong light. Seemingly all shot in dim overcast days, she manages to maintain the strength of the colors while still keeping the entire frame out of focus.

For me "subject" has always been a questionable term. Utah Barth manages to capture the stark beauty of life, but not as we know or see it. By creating images that lack subject and instead focus not on the objects in the frame, but rather the light and the color that make them up, Barth manages to build landscapes for the imagination in which the viewer can fill in the blanks with any story they might like. For this reason, I believe Utah Barth, among others, have transcended the need for "subject".

Barth's work specifically speaks to me because it manages to make visual, ideas that I've been thinking about for years. I wrote my Univ 200 paper on the concept of lack of "subject" in photography and I've geared almost all of my work towards this early idea. Almost all of the books or photos that I've made have been lacking "subject" to instead play with color and light, by finding Uta Barth's work, I found an artist who thought similar thoughts and managed to create famous works of art with similar techniques to mine. It gives me hope and encouragement seeing images like these.