Uta Barth
Sophie Calle
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Francesca Woodman
Idris Khan
Gregory Crewdson
Todd Hido
Edward Hopper
Mishka Henner
"Everything is pointing to one’s own activity of looking, to an awareness and sort of hyper-consciousness of visual perception. The only way I know how to invite this experience is by removing the other things (i.e., subject matter) for you to think about. I think all of this adds up to the conflation of subject and object that you are asking about."
- Uta Barth
Uta Barth is a German American photographer whose work I have previously engaged with, making her practice a natural and informed reference point for this project.
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Her work focuses on perception, attention, and the act of seeing itself. Rather than photographing traditional subjects or events, Barth is interested in what lies at the edge of vision, moments that are often overlooked, unfocused, or dismissed as insignificant. Her work challenges the expectation that photography should clearly depict a subject, instead encouraging viewers to become aware of how they look at images and how meaning is constructed through perception.
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Barth's work aligns closely with conceptual photography, where the idea behind the image is as important as - or more than - what is visibly present.
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A key theme within her work is absence. However, this absence is not literal emptiness, instead, it exists through the removal of focus, a subject, or narrative clarity. In series such as 'Ground and ...and of time', Barth photographs interirors, windows, light, and domestic spaces where no clear subject is offered. The images often appear blurred, cropped, or partially obscured, creating a visual experience that feels incomplete or unresolved.
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By withholding visual information, Barth forces the viewer to slow down and question what they are seeing. The absence of a central subject shifts attention toward light, colour, space, and the viewer's own expectations. This aligns strongly with the idea that absence can be an active presence within an image rather than a lack.
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Technically, Barth's work is highly controlled despite its understated appearance. She frequently uses shallow depth of field and intentional blur, allowing areas - or the entire image - to be out of focus. This choice removes clarity and resists the traditional photographic aim of sharpness and detail.
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Negative space also dominates many of her images, transforming emptiness into a compositional tool rather than a background element. Natural light plays a significant role, particularly light entering through windows, which becomes both the subject and atmosphere.
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Barth's minimal editing style supports this approach. Colour tones are sublte and cohesive, avoiding high contrast or dramatic manipulation. This reinforces the quiet, observational nature of her work and maintains ambiguity.
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Barth's photography directly challenges the question "what do you see?" by refusing to provide an obvious answer. Her images do not guide interpretation but instead invite uncertainty. Viewers are encouraged to become aware of their own viewing process, noticing how quickly they search for meaning, narrative, or recognisable subjects.
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This approach positions absence as a tool for engagement. Rather than presenting information, Barth removes it, allowing perception and interpretation to become the focus of her work.
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Uta Barth's work has strongly influenced my approach to exploring absence and interpretation. Like Barth, I am interested in creating images that resist immediate understanding and instead rely on negative space, minimal composition, and visual restraint. Her use of blur, partial framing, and lack of explicit subjects has informed my decision to allow space, silence, and ambiguity to play an active role in my images.
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However, while Barth often removes human presence entirely, my work explores absence through traces, silhouettes, and partial visibility. This difference allows me to build on her exploration of perception while incorporating subtle indicators of presence, creating a tension between what is seen and what is missing.
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This makes her practice particularly relevant to my project, which aims to challenge viewers to question what they are seeing rather than accept an image at face value.
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“By virtue of being pictures of nothing in particular, [Barth’s photographs] manage to be about a great deal indeed.”
- Mark Van de Walle
“Barth has invented a new visual language — one that … reveals how, not what the eye sees, and how the brain processes what is seen.”
- Jill Spalding
“There are no subjects, no people, no landmarks to provide context or orientation. Only light, color, and the passage of time guide our gaze and bodily experience.”
- Wengie Zhao
This image is intentionally out of focus, presenting a scene that appears recognisable yet remains unresolved. The blurred points of light suggest headlights in the distance, presumably on a road, but the lack of sharpness prevents the viewer from fully confirming the setting. This ambiguity shifts the focus away from identifying the subject and instead places the emphasis on perception and atmosphere.
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Technically, the shallow focus removes detail and clarity, causing the lights to dissolve and create a bokeh effect. This abstracts the scene and challenges the conventional photographic expectations of sharpness and control, aligning the image more with experiential seeing than documentation.
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Following the rule of thirds, the lights sit to the left of the frame and create a balanced effect in conjunction with the dark shadows on the opposite side. It is impossible to tell what else is being captured here, but from the recognisable car, we can assume that it is a road scene and can then use the context to take guesses around what is surrounding the car. This paints the viewer as the storyteller rather than the photographer.
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The simple colour palette also adds to the atmosphere and creates a sense of familiarity, allowing the viewer to better guess at what is being shown. Nothing demands attention aggressively, instead, it asks the viewer to slow down and sit with the questions it creates.
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Conceptually, the image suggests presence without definition. The lights imply movement, direction, or human activity, yet the absence of clear form makes this presence feel unreachable and distant. The viewer is aware that something is there, but it cannot be fully accessed or understood. This creates a tension between recognition and loss, where the image feels familiar but emotionally distant.
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Overall, this image embodies the idea of absence through visual ambiguity. By withholding focus and detail, it invites interpretation rather than explanation, encouraging the viewer to question not only what they are seeing, but how much clarity they expect from an image in the first place.