Birthe Piontek Gives New Identity to Found Photographs

Vancouver-based photographer Birthe Piontek is most widely recognized for her intimate, narrative-driven portraits. While much of her work takes a fairly straightforward approach, her recent series “Mimesis” uses re-photographed vernacular images to create collages and still lifes that expand on her personal portraits with an investigation into the broader complexity of human identity.

Piontek begins by searching for found images on Ebay, in thrift stores and flea markets. She primarily looks for images like studio portraits and other non-candid scenarios in which the subject gazes directly into the camera without distraction. Piontek writes: “The moment where it is all about the person and not so much about capturing a situation or event, so that the image becomes a representation of that person.”  

Knowing little about the people in the photographs, she uses them as source material to create her own fictions about their identities. “I usually spend quite a bit of time with the image, looking at it and familiarizing myself with it," Says, Piontek. "In a way I try to get to know the person that is shown in it, and figure out the essence and uniqueness of that particular image.”

Once she determines a photograph to be suitable, Piontek scans it, and reproduces the image, in many cases working from its copy. She begins manipulating the copy, often cutting into it and incorporating other materials like glass, paint, foil and fabric to create unique still lifes that give the image an entirely new form. While the final piece is still a one-dimensional image, it often looks like an installation shot of a diorama, a three-dimensional collage or still life.  “It’s a very physical, almost sculptural process, something that is new and very exciting to me.”

The title of her series, “Mimesis,” comes from the ancient Greek philosophical term related to imitation, representation and the presentation of the self. For Piontek, its most resonating meaning is a reference to the relationship between an image and its “real” original source. This idea was at the heart of her shift from from shooting portraits to creating new images from found photos.

“I questioned the power of an image and what it can actually reveal of a person’s identity,” says Piontek “I felt I had come to a bit of a dead end in my practice, a point where I thought I would just repeat myself if I continued taking pictures the way I did. There was also the feeling of ‘hitting a wall,’ of staying on the surface when my desire was to go deeper, underneath that surface, and explore the internal landscape of a human being.”

While the people in her found images likely have their own narratives, their identities are obscured by the physical object-ness of their photographs left behind. Ultimately, Piontek’s creations are a means to better understand her own process of representing people, and the limits of photography to accurately represent their actual identity.

“In this project I am not only investigating the relationship between the image of a person and the original but also the question to what degree the complexity of human identity can be visualized in an image. As with any form of art, this project is fictional - it’s a mythical world I created that illustrates what I think human identity might look like.....Mimesis is a somewhat broader look at the complexity of human identity and in a way also a meditation on portrait photography and the power of an image.”

Bio: Birthe Piontek is a fine art photographer based in Vancouver BC, Canada. Originally from Germany, she moved to Canada in 2005 after receiving her MFA from the University of Essen in Communication Design and Photography. Her project The Idea of North won the Critical Mass Book Award 2009, and was published as a monograph in 2011. Her work has been exhibited internationally, in both solo and group shows, and has appeared in a number of international publications like The New York Times Magazine, Le Monde, Wired and The New Yorker among others.

Posted
AuthorJon Feinstein
Tagscollage, identity, diorama, still life, vernacular photography, portraiture, found photography

Matthew Swarts Transforms Intimate Portraits into Psychoactive Masterpieces

When photographer Matthew Swarts ended a long-term relationship, he faced a collection of photographs that felt mysteriously divorced from their original sense of intimacy. Images that once represented a deeply personal connection began to feel strangely removed, like discovering a shoebox of a stranger’s old snapshots. Instead of throwing them away, Swarts began to rework each image, in most cases covering or obscuring the original photographs with scanned information from the web. These initial images were part of a series called Beth, which evolved into Swarts' most recent body of work, The Alternatives.  In both series, Swarts process revolves around layering these personal images with graphs, mathematical patterns, and other abstractions that serve as visual representations of his growing uncertainty in an attempt to make sense of his developing sense of distance. 

The experience of looking at The Alternatives is not only distant, but also incredibly psychoactive. With no central focal point, the eye wanders in limitless directions and event through the image, much like staring through a 1990’s Magic Eye illustration. At first glace, many of Swarts’ images appear to be pure abstractions – patterns, or optical illusions not unlike those from childhood science textbooks. However, with a prolonged, steady gaze, a figure emerges – Swarts’ partner—almost as distorted as the initial surface patterns.  These are at times both enticing, and nauseating – they make your head hurt yet you somehow can’t avert your eyes. 

This aesthetic acid-trip comes from an elaborate technical process, compositing portraits of his partner with various digital tools, surfaces and forms. In many cases, Swarts repeats patterns, sharpens, bends, and virtually destroys the source images in order to create a exaggerated sense of visual cacophony. The patterns that overlay his personal photographs come from sources ranging from random web searches, to children’s books of optical illusions. 

“I’m more interested in what’s left over when I manipulate then subtract out the beginning,” says Swarts. “I’m fascinated by that optical shift and want most of all to make prints that actively operate this kind of perceptual confusion.” 

The utter randomness of Swarts’ source material reflects his distance from images that were once incredibly close and personal. The complex patterns, layers and zeros and ones become indistinguishable from images that were once close to his heart.

“I like the way they make my eyes feel, and they make my mind think of options. They present apparent topography and give opportunity for an altered perception of space. These are things that I also like about portraits and the people behind them.”

Bio: Matthew Swarts’ work has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Doubletake Magazine, Contact Sheet, Afterimage, Fotophile, In the Loupe, and other publications. He attended Princeton University and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and has taught photography at Amherst College, Bowdoin College, Ramapo College, The University of Connecticut, The University of Massachusetts, Boston, Middlesex College, and The Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

He is the recipient of a J.William Fulbright Scholar Grant and the Ruttenberg Arts Foundation Award for the best new work nationally in photographic portraiture. 

His work is represented by Kopeikin Gallery  and will be shown with Paul Kopekin at MIAMI PROJECT December 2nd - December 7th 2014, and in a solo exhibition at Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles, from Feb 28th to April 4th, 2015. 

Posted
AuthorJon Feinstein
TagsMatthew Swarts, portraiture, abstraction, psychedelic, psychoactive, new photography