What type of photography does she do?

She is known for exploring the tactile and formal qualities of the printed book and its potential for abstraction. 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. By emphasizing the unique “aura” and materiality of printed matter, Bartley’s work offers a celebration of textural and tactile properties, a particularly potent act in this increasingly digital age.

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Examples of her work:

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These photos were taken by Mary during the lockdown due to covid 19. She set herself a challenge where she would pick 6/7 objects that had similarities which she would then photograph every day of the lockdown in different positions/ways. The objects she had chosen were very basic everyday objects which would are usually just used and ignored. Mary managed to make these objects look interesting and she was very creative with how she changed every photo every day whether it was the lighting, angles and positioning.

Personally, her most interesting picture out of the collection of images she had produced was this one:

My reasoning for this is because it’s the most creative one yet. She has used one of her objects (toilet paper) to create outlines which if you analyse the other pictures, they are very clearly the objects she had chosen. The use of light as well to emphasise the shadows and colour for example the orange soap.

Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. Sometimes the resulting composite image is photographed so that the final image may appear as a seamless physical print. 

It was first used as a technique by the dadaists in 1915 in their protests against the First World War. It was later adopted by the surrealists who exploited the possibilities photomontage offered by using free association to bring together widely disparate images, to reflect the workings of the unconscious mind.

1. A photomontage is a collage constructed from photographs.

1. Historically, the technique has been used to make political statements and gained popularity in the early 20th century (World War 1-World War 2)
2. Artists such as Raoul Haussman , Hannah Hoch, John Heartfield employed cut-n-paste techniques as a form of propaganda…as did Soviet artists like Aleksander Rodchenko and El Lissitsk

1. Photomontage has its roots in Dadaism…which is closely related to Surrrealism

Mary Ellen-Bartley is a photographer who mainly focuses on taking photos of books. Just as the covid-19 pandemic hit she was in italy at the time taking photos at the Giorgio Morandi studio and library, where she has to quickly leave and get the next flight back to her home in new york.

it was during her quarantine where she decided to chose 7 house hold items to photograph for every day of April. an example of one of the days she photographed is just above.

every day she would re-arrange each object, some days would be more subtle tan others however, each day was different. as you tell from the photo above and below.