Jeff Bark

Here' a little about what Jeff Bark is all about:
American artist Jeff Bark's series of elaborately constructed photographs depict contemporary urban motifs, such as the debris of American consumerism with an opulent, Dutch master quality of light and tone. Bark’s photography likens the traditions of the old masters style of painting, photographing on a studio set of enormous proportions he pays meticulous attention to detail. It is more about removing light, than adding it. Bark explains, “When I am ready to photograph my subject, there is practically not much light coming from strobes. I use long exposures and that is what gives the effect of a painting. It looks as if the light is illuminating from the subject rather than onto it.” Bark also shoots his share of nudes, but he does not consider it to be an attempt at eroticism.  Bark says, “My nudes are not intended to be erotic. I like to photograph people who are more average, like the guy next-door type. To shoot a model nude again would be boring, not at all challenging. It’s like photographing Cuba; everybody makes good photos of Cuba.”
Bark’s use of light and shadow are created manually and not digitally. Whether saturated in mute color, or rich with the blue hues of the moonlight, Bark’s work draws out the volatile beauty of his subjects and settings in juxtaposition as a visual inspiration from past art movements.


Bark tells me, "I always thought photography was so easy...if someone else can take the picture than I am not trying hard enough." Brash though he might be, Bark follows through with his bite. He can bend something provocative to a work that is poignant and amusing.
He says he controls his palette by limiting it, building the set say, around the colours of a dirty baby carriage he finds, which forms his code base for the series.
That is perhaps why his photographs are governed by a dramatic sense of light, a Caravaggio light that makes the passage from dark to the pale ethereal bodies the light exposes so revelatory; he reveals veins underneath skin, "there is no light on the people, I light the air around them, but it never really touches them... The illumination of the whole picture comes from the body."
The figures appear transcendent, psychically displaced.

Jeff Bark had always wanted to be a photographer since he was twelve, "I used to write to photographers in New York and never heard back from them - now since I've been doing this - almost everyday I get a call from some kid," he says. The imperfections in his photographs speak to people.
When he did become successful as a fashion photographer, it was the lack of freedom in his professional life that led him to react against the standards of perfection imposed by the industry
"The most beautiful you can be," Bark says, "is maybe for a week when you are seventeen. If you're touching stuff up, it kind of fucks everyone's head up. No one really looks like that. And you're constantly judging yourself against something that's not realistic.
"In my art photography I wanted to show people how they are. People seeing the Abandon series, might feel better about themselves after. You can see the beauty in a roll of skin, a patch of hair, so you don't feel as bad about yours or you can be forgiving of others. I was never interested in nude photography, to me it seems stupid..."

A sense of quest and solitude pervades his images, from optimistic waterfalls to people alone in their rooms protecting some intimate little secret. Bark sums it up, "Everyone wants the same thing out of life I think, everyone's kind of lonely, everyone's down, seeing it in a picture, you feel you're not alone."