ART PRESENTATION: Barbra Probst-The Moment In Space
Barbara Probst is a German photographer and contemporary artist, If photography freezes a split-second in time, Barbara Probst dissects and disperses that moment using a series of radio-controlled cameras to simultaneously record the same instant from multiple angles and distances. The resulting images reveal a number of diverse realities and undermine the notion of photographic “truth”.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Le Bal Archive
Barbra Probst’s solo exhibition “The Moment In Space” is her first in Paris. Her work is based on her early years of study at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, where she studied sculpture. “We were modeling with clay every day with a nude model posing for us. We would create a three-dimensional image of our model as naturalistically as possible. The nude model would stand on a turntable that we would turn every 10 minutes by about 30 or 40 degrees, so that each student could see every possible angle of the model”. As a photographer, Barbara Probst sculpts time. And she imposes a grid of spatial reading on our perception of the image. In contrast to the time-lapse photography of Eadweard Muybridge, where sequential images scientifically analyse movement to build a clear narrative, Probst’s fragmentation of the instant challenges our faith in the veracity of any single image, as well as the potential of photography to adequately represent reality. In her work the moment is multiplied into several views constitutes an exposure, a constellation of perspectives that induces multifaceted, sometimes contradictory readings of the image. Barbara Probst is not interested so much in what is represented as in the way it is represented. Using gestures, faces and objects that are as neutral as possible, she minimises the narrative character of each view and seeks a more open, more ambiguous rendering. She has always been intrigued by the 1960s writers and filmmakers who broke with classical narrative, like Alain Robbe-Grillet and Jean-Luc Godard. “Their way of storytelling was to go against the expectations of the reader or viewer by creating cracks and gaps in the story or by unexpectedly changing the perspective. They treated the narrative not unlike a cubist painter treated space…”. The titles of Barbara Probst’s works hint at a forensic enquiry: date, location and precise time are carefully recorded, pinpointing the exact moment captured and apparently confirming the photograph’s status as irrefutable documentary proof of an event. As viewers we find ourselves in the unnatural position of being able to apprehend the same instant from multiple perspectives, to experience time as spatial rather than linear. Constant oscillations between viewpoints prevent us from automatically identifying with the singular position of the photographer, keeping us on the move as we explore these frozen moments and attempt to synthesize the individual images into a comprehensive account of the event. The lurching switches between modes and styles in Probst’s scenes are counter-balanced by her subtle – but no less unsettling – intimate double portrait works. Identically shot with only a few degrees difference in camera position, this slight shift is enough to induce a quiet vibration in perception, to once again throw into question our own standpoint as viewers.
Info: Curators: Frédéric Paul and Diane Dufour, Le Bal, 6 Impasse de la Défense, Paris, Duration 10/5-25/8/19, Days & Hours: Wed 12:00-22:00, Thu-Sun 12:00-19:00, www.le-bal.fr
