what type of photography does she do?
Mary Ellen Bartley is known for her photographs exploring the tactile and formal qualities of the printed book, and its potential for abstraction. Bartley’s work concerns itself with geometry and pure form; painterly in style, her photos also invite curiosity about the layered histories of the books themselves. Her photos are alive with questions – about what we do and don’t see and the stories we tell. Yet the spirit of her work provides a reflective response, a respite, from a noisy and chaotic world.
Examples of her work:
‘7 things again and again’
Bartley chose a set of seven common household items, and committed to photographing them each day for the thirty days of April. Her seven elements remained recognizable but were detached from their everyday function, serving instead as an exploration of form and process. Experimenting with exposure, depth of focus and subtle variations in light and shadow, Bartley transformed the quotidian objects into moments of stilled time
This is my favourite image from her ‘7 things again and again’ as she has been creative with the objects and not just placed them in a different way, but manipulated the book and used a page from it to create a shadow of the object behind it.