Andrew Barker
21 Artworks
photography
About Andrew
Andrew Barker has been practicing photography for nearly thirty years and has been a practitioner and lay-scholar of 19th and early 20th century photography for the last fifteen years. In this regard, he predominantly uses cameras from this period. He also specializes in ways of processing that combine the methods used during these periods with more modern, contemporary ones. He has learned his skills through extensive research, and by experimentation and practice with methods forgotten and sometime over seen.
He believes in the diversity of the traditional hand crafting of the photographic medium. This may leave the viewer to grapple with his or her own means of perception, filling in the narrative and visual gaps with imagined scenarios. He tries to create simple visuals that stimulate both intellect and vision, often capturing what is elusive to normal sight.
“My intention is not to ‘record’ the faces operations and ravages one sees, rather the experiences of what I can’t see or understand. Through this I can create each fine work separately with different sets of rules and limitation, so they can have an inimitable object quality”
Wishing Stone
by andrew barker
Andrew Barker is pleased to release this work for viewing. In this body of work he has used ashen tone and the lack thereof to create these images of the present in the throes of the past. He has used this vintage media printed modernly to encourage the viewer with a romantic sensibility towards photography and its true making. This view will hopefully saturate the viewer with the romanticism that Andrew believes is the cornerstone of unseen histories in photography.
‘Wishing Stone’ is a series of studies drawn from a larger project four years in the making. ‘THE STORY OF STONE’.
An exhibition will premiere in its entirety at a future exhibition space.
Wishing Stone is merely a preview of one aspect of ‘THE STORY OF STONE’. It will be illustrated in a 70-page book to be released.
In many ways, these photographs are straightforward and easy to like. But the best of these works are more than just a sight gag. They offer intricate layers of additional meanings as one might look at their sacredness and readings that go beyond mere snappy photos to rather magic in their layers. In Andrew’s view, these are the images that will ultimately have the most durability as they add complexity in the process of making and raise questions in a market of digital media slap. They may end up as pigmented ink prints, as darkroom work is where it starts but finds its own language as time moves on.
The work has an old school sense of nuance that seems to have been forgotten in these fast paced times. He still values rhythm and lyricism, tempered by thoughtfulness and a sense of history and love of making images to inspire.
