Mary Ellen Bartley has photographed four series of books, including her Blue Books and Paperbacks. Speaking of her most recent series, Standing Open, Bartley says, “While shooting stacks and rows of tightly closed paperback books, I started seeing some of the standing books loosen up and show bits of the space between their pages.” Viewers of the work often note a painterly quality to many of Bartley’s images evocative of the work of Mark Rothko or Morris Louis, for example.
Drawn into the uniquely beautiful interior space of the books, she began opening all kinds of books and placing them standing open around her space, where sunlight might fall on them. “This quickly became a project of looking into my photography books in a new way,” she says. “This work interests me on many levels. First is the sheer beauty of the physical books and the unique formal discoveries of looking at them close up. Among the repeating formal motifs I’ve found are the stripes the pages create, the shadowy voids between pages that read like burns or stains and the reflections the photos can make on the pages facing them.”
On another level, Bartley says, she’s fascinated by conceptual ideas concerning appropriation and reproduction in a mechanical versus digital age, which the work can’t help but throw into question. What is the unique aura or presence of a book? “Finally,” she adds, “what drives the work for me is the emotional connection I have to the books. I’m trying to evoke the sensuality and intimacy of reading and looking through books, as well as the fleeting inspiration, little jolts of connection found for me in books I love.”
Mary Ellen Bartley, Books
Until October 29, 2011
Corden|Potts Gallery
49 Geary Street, Suite 410
San Francisco, CA 94108
T 415 781 0110
