Barbara Bosworth: The Heavens

Joseph Bellows Gallery is pleased to announce its upcoming online exhibition, Barbara Bosworth: The Heavens.  The show is comprised of both color and black and white images that portray, with emotive resonance, the star-filled night sky, the sun, the moon and at times the landscape below.  Bosworth's celestial views are created through hour-long exposures made with her 8 x 10 inch camera mounted on a clock drive, and her sun and moon images by means of a telescope affixed to her large format camera.  From these negatives, luminous, large-scale prints are produced to render her nuanced and evocative imagery.

“There is in each person, in every animal, bird and plant a star which mirrors, matches or is in some sense the same as a star in the heavens.”  - Paracelsus

In commenting on her inspiration for these empyrean vistas, Bosworth writes: “Every clear night of the summer my father would go out for a walk to look at the night sky. Many nights I would join him. We knew the North Star, and the Big Bear, but the rest became our own. At times we stood still for an hour or more to watch for shooting stars. We had no agenda. It was all about amazement at a sky full of stars. With this sense of wonder, I began making photographs of the Heavens. In these days of the Hubble Telescope and its spectacular imagery from deep space, I wanted a reminder of the mystery of our own night sky.” 

Barbara Bosworth's work explores both overt and subtle relationships between humans and the rest of the natural world. Whether chronicling the efforts of hunters or bird banders, or evoking the seasonal changes that transform mountains and meadows, Bosworth’s caring attention to the world around her results in images that similarly inspire viewers to look closely.  Bosworth grew up in Novelty, Ohio, and currently lives in Massachusetts, where she is a professor emeritus of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston.  Over her long career, Bosworth has photographed in both black and white and color. Her single images display a generous attention to small facts, while her large-scale triptychs reveal a panoramic awareness, one that lets viewers glimpse relationships between frames across a wide field. While all of Bosworth’s projects remind viewers not only that we shape the rest of nature but that it also shapes us.

Bosworth’s work has been widely exhibited, notably in recent retrospectives at the Denver Art Museum in Colorado, Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona. Her publications include, The Sea (Radius Books, 2022), The Heavens (Radius Books, 2018), The Meadow (Radius Books, 2015), Natural Histories (Radius Books, 2013), Trees: National Champions (MIT Press; Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, 2005) and Chasing the Light (Nightwood Press, 2002).

The solo exhibition, Barbara Bosworth: Sun Light Moon Shadow is currently on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art.  Curated by Barbara Tannenbaum and timed to coincide with the total solar eclipse visible in Cleveland on April 8, the exhibition celebrates the beauty of Bosworth’s photographs — from celestial canopies and eclipses, to sunrises and sunsets.