Piece Listing Details
- Starting Price:
- $3,500.00
- Sale Length:
- Until sold
- Ends On:
- N/A
Piece Details
- Owned by:
- Barbara Rachko
- Genres:
- Photography
- Media:
- Photograph on Kodak Supra N Paper
- Size:
- 40" x 39" (Framed)
- Emotions:
- childhood
- Description:
- In essence, the chromogenic color prints in the Gods and Monsters series are experiments in which I relinquish control. Basic picture-taking techniques, like focusing and composing an image in the rangefinder, are abandoned. Although they depict the same Mexican folk art figures that appear in my pastel paintings — masks, carved wooden animals, papier mâché figures, and toys — the photos in this series are evolving as a distinct body of work. These photographs are created in ways that are substantially opposite to how I work as a painter. My pastel paintings are well thought out, methodical, labor-intensive, and highly representational. The photos are none of these things: each is accidental, spontaneous, and dream-like. I use Fuji negative film and do not employ digital manipulations in either the shooting or printing of the images. These images are created inside the camera and in the darkroom. To blur the scene, I pick a focal length and leave it on that setting as I work, moving in and out and around the setup. I photograph through colored plastic gels to add shapes and colors, to abstract and otherwise render details unrecognizable. Sometimes I position the camera flat on the floor or tilt it up at an angle, pressing the shutter release without looking through the rangefinder. Each image is an unrepeatable surprise. Always I am letting go, breaking habits learned as a painter and a photographer, exploring, and seeing what will happen. In this series I am “painting with a camera,” creating variations that free it from being a mechanical recording device of what lies before it. The work I do as a painter involves transforming a photograph into a painting (I use photographs for reference). Whether I am taking photographs or making prints in the darkroom, I am engaged in the analogous, if opposite, process of translating elements of painting into making a photograph.
- The Story:
- A note about subject matter. On trips to Mexico I spend much of my time in the local mask shops, markets, and bazaars searching for the figures that will later populate my photographs and paintings. I take objects with a unique Mexican past—most have been used in various religious festivals—and give them a second life, so to speak, in New York in the present. When I return home, I read prodigiously and find out as much about them as I can. I use these objects not only as surrogates for human actors, but as potent symbols: an amalgam of childhood memories, half-forgotten dreams, and images encountered in literature, pre-columbian art, mythology, and cinema. The imagery is autobiographical and very personal, but has universal associations.
Sale History
Request more information
Have a Board of Investment Art Broker contact you today! Your information will be confidential and will not be distributed to any third parties.
Untitled
Barbara Rachko (other works)
Comments
Does this piece remind you of a story or experience in your life? Become a Member and tell us about it.
