Throughout her career, artist Uta Barth has been fascinated by the elements of light, time, and vision.
Her photographs capture the subtle effects of illumination on various surfaces over specific periods of time while also investigating the difference between human optics and the mechanical vision of the camera.
Her sweeping new project …from dawn to dusk., created from images of an often overlooked corner of the Getty Center, is now on view.
This multipart work includes 75 photographs mounted on panels and a single video that cycles through still images captured over the course of a calendar year. The composition traces the movement of sunlight and documents the complex pattern of shadows it casts on the walls and ground. The piece provides a visual experience that oscillates, at times hypnotically, from faithful depiction of a specific place to representations of visual fatigue, those moments when one’s sight deteriorates as it is overwhelmed by light.
A keen observer of ephemeral moments, the Los Angeles–based artist has been translating fleeting scenes into quiet, contemplative photographs for most of her career. Her prints defy the traditional expectations of the medium in their refusal to focus on a central subject, directing the viewer’s attention instead to the complexities—and limitations—of the act of seeing itself.
…from dawn to dusk. began in 2018 when Jim Cuno, then president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, commissioned Barth to make a work in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the completion of the Center. This sprawling hilltop site was designed by architect Richard Meier and exemplifies the architect’s interpretation of modernist principles, including the dominance of basic geometric forms, the use of open spaces, and an emphasis on light. Notably, Meier’s choices of surface materials, including travertine and white aluminum-clad walls, all serve to amplify sunlight.
Following multiple visits, during which Barth toured the entirety of the site, she selected to photograph a public area. For over a year, she returned twice a month with two assistants to set up a GigaPan, a high-resolution digital camera, along with a more conventional digital single-lens reflex camera, and made exposures every five minutes from dawn until dusk.
By February 2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the Center, she had amassed over 65,000 images. With her studio assistants, she reviewed and studied these over the next year, making composite proofs that mapped out the days captured each month. She then began thinking about ways individual photographs and groupings reflected her experiences of spending time at the Center.
The resulting work is perhaps Barth’s most ambitious project to date. The tightly formed panels, arranged into seven groupings that represent different months, are presented in a gridded installation that wraps around the perimeter of a gallery. Their shape references the square panels that adorn the Center’s facade, walls, and floor. Individual images capture its capacity to amplify light and the playful and ever-changing ways that shadows are cast on its surface over the course of a year.
The panels are presented in three sizes and alternate between clear representations of a specific location and atmospheric renderings characterized by soft focus and inverted colors. The strategy of digitally reversing tonalities is one Barth has employed in previous bodies of work to varying degrees. It is a way to approximate afterimages, a visual phenomenon that often happens after closing one’s eyes following a prolonged period of looking. Here, she moves this idea in a direction that further confuses what has been seen with something drawn from the imagined.
Like all the works in Barth’s oeuvre, this one is less a visual description of a specific place than a series of observations interspersed with interpretation and efforts to approximate a particular way of viewing her environment. This focuses the composition on the act of looking and the many quirks of vision that have been a central component of her methodology for several decades. The commission responds to the sense of overwhelming brightness of the site, which Barth has described as “viscerally disorienting.”
…from dawn to dusk. can be seen in Uta Barth: Peripheral Vision, on view at the Getty Center Museum from November 15, 2022, to February 19, 2023.
