Lisa Barnard

We had a talk by Lisa Barnard, a photographer who is interested in photography which is interactive and makes fluid the lines between producer, work and viewer. I found her work quite interesting, as she often used found imagery and virtual photography, both of which can be argued to ber "not her work." AN example is some pictures of Margerat thatcher she found in an old conservative building. She took photos of these, which were at various stages of rotting, and these became an art project,as below.



These photos are, of course, someones else's wrok, but by photographing them now in a different context and condidtion, we are asked to think different things about them; I thourght that this was an intersting way for photography and who might own it, to go.

She also has done quite a lot of virtual photography, in respect to army soliders having to interact with a "virtual world" as a way to deal with war trauma. Quite a lot of her photography is therefore shots of a world which is non-exsistant. (as below)
This raises quite a lot of intersting questions about photography; photography is obsessed with the idea that it is "a representation of reality", whether or not it can be argued to be this is something critics are constantly talking about. Here, she is photographing a controlled and compltley computer based virtual reality, with a digital camera. In terms of Manovitch, this could be seen to be a total change in photography; it is now only numbers and screens, and virtual effects. In other ways, this is still photography, she is capturing a moment and asking us to look and think about it; in this picture opposite, we are asked to try and understand what a solider might face during a war, and in this trauma clinic, and are faced with our own ideas of whether or not this is satisfactory.


A final note on Barnad; she said she likes to have an egaged and interactive audience; not just photos on a wall. I liked this idea, and have looked at some of her installations for ideas. She osten has a mix of information and video, as well as photographs. She also set up light boxes, in which the photographs are set up, and you can walk around, to make the art work appear more 3D, and interactive, not just on a wall.