Uta Barth

German-born, American-based artist Uta Barth (b.1958) is among the key recent figures who have brought photography to the prominent position once occupied by painting. Her photographs of interior and exterior, urban and natural environments capture fleeting moments as if glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye, where we become aware of the beauty of everyday light, space, texture and luminous surfaces. Working in broad series, each body of work explores different details of our surroundings, such as the corner of a room (Ground #38, 1994), the headlights of a passing car (Field #3, 1995), bare trees seen through a window (white blind [bright red], 2002). A kind of 'portrait photography, but with the sitter removed', Barth's work focuses not on the subject of the photograph, but on the subtle play of light and shade on planes and surfaces: that is, the phenomena of vision itself.