Mary Ellen Bartley is an American photographer who is best know for her photography in books. During lockdown Mary Ellen Bartley did a shoot called ‘7 Things Again and Again’ this shoot involved taking a series of images of the same objects arranged differently each day. She displays the objects in a simple way however it is unique and effective.
Examples from her ‘7 Things Again and Again’ photoshoot:
Walker Evans is one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. His elegant, crystal-clear photographs and articulate publications have inspired several generations of artists. He took up the camera and gradually redirected his aesthetic impulses to bring the strategies of literature—lyricism, irony, incisive description, and narrative structure into the medium of photography.
Most of Evans’ early photographs reveal the influence of European modernism, specifically its formalism and emphasis on dynamic graphic structures.
The Ravestijn Gallery presents the works of Darren Harvey-Regan, a photographer interested in the concept that photographs do not exist just to show things, but are physical things that become objects themselves.
In 1955, Fortune magazine published, ‘Beauties of the Common Tool’, a portfolio by Walker Evans featuring pictures of ordinary hand-made tools, such as a ratchet wrench and a pair of scissors.
Harvey-Regan was inspired by Evan’s work and first constructed a montage of Evans’s images to make new forms. He then sourced matching tools, cut them in half and re-joined various halves together, with the resulting physical objects being photographed to create his final work. The montaged tools become both beautiful and bizarre objects, in which a ratchet wrench is combined with a pair of pliers and a Mason’s trowel joined with a pair of scissors.
The New Objectivity emerged as a style in Germany in the 1920s as a challenge to Expressionism. This refers to art in which the image of reality is distorted in order to make it expressive of the artist’s inner feelings or ideas.
As its name suggests, it offered a return to unsentimental reality and a focus on the objective world, as opposed to the more abstract, romantic, or idealistic tendencies of expressionism.
Renger-Patzsch was born in Würzburg, Germany, and began making photographs by age twelve. In the early 1920s he worked as a press photographer for the Chicago Tribune before becoming a freelancer and, in 1925, publishing a book called Das Chorgestühl von Kappenberg (The Choir Stalls of Cappenberg). He had his first museum exhibition in Lübeck in 1927.
A second book followed in 1928 called Die Welt ist schön (The World is Beautiful). This was his best-known book, and is made up of a collection of one hundred of his photographs.
In its sharply focused and matter-of-fact style, his work exemplifies the aesthetic of the New Objectivity. Renger-Patzsch believed that the value of photography was in its ability to reproduce the texture of reality, and to represent the essence of an object.
Some examples of his work
Karl Blossfeldt was a German photographer and sculptor. He is best known for his close-up photographs of plants and living things. He was inspired, by nature and the ways in which plants grow. He believed that “the plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure.”
Among his contacts at the Berlin Arts and Crafts School was Heinz Warneke. From 1923, he was professor at the Vereinigte Staatsschulen für Freie und Angewandte Kunst (United State Schools for Fine and Applied Art) in Berlin, Germany. He died aged 67.
Some examples of his work
This is Mary Ellen Bartley.
Mary Ellen Bartley is well known for her photography featuring books. She displays them in a simple but unique way. Her genre of photography is still life. Her work celebrates books, which is particularly important now as many have turned away from books and use online technology. Her simplistic style entices the viewer as it is perfect and pleasing to the eye. Here are some examples that I like:
This is a photo of her setup when photographing her images:
She is using a tripod. This stops her images from blurring and allows her to adjust the camera angle until it is perfect. She is using natural lighting from the window, it is not harsh and goes great with this image. She is also using a plain white background.
This is an exhibition by Mary Ellen Bartley. Personally, I really like it. The colours and perfectly framed pictures is very pleasing and calming. This also shows the variety and beauty of books, some old, some new.
Photoshoot inspired by Mary Ellen Bartley
Edits
I have edited 3 images on photo shop and have merged them together.
For my single object photoshoot I used a train ticket, candle, pair of scissors and a jar of chillies. I took the most images of the train ticket because it is sentimental to me as it’s from the first woman’s football game I went to see. Some of my favourite images from the shoot are the candle ones with the blue and purple effect on them because it creates a nice blue shadow. I also favour the images with the bright white background with the train ticket as it brings the orange out in the ticket which could catch the audiences eye. I think the arrangement of the chillis make those photos interesting as it will draw the audience to the image.
