Sophie Barbasch – Fault Line

Sophie Barbasch

is a photographer who lives in New York City. After graduating from Brown University in Rhode Island, she went on to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design to receive her Masters in Fine Art. As more of an artist than photographer, it’s less the technicalities of film and more the pursuit of “contradiction and dislocation” in her images. Capturing a moment that she knows will never exist again.

Sophie Barbasch – Cinematic ‘Snapshots’

Her cinematic and heavy textures permeate her pictures. Just when you think you’re viewing a family snapshot, a hint of a deeper emotion captures your left brain perceptions. ‘Fault Line’ was really a project about those inner feelings we all sometimes hide. To face them may provide some catharsis,…but maybe it’s all in vain, and we just have to go through life accepting the cards we’re dealt.

I like the purity and “serenity with an edge” of the images. When you’re exposed to an image that makes you stop and think outside of yourself, then the artist has been successful. And Sophie Barbasch is definitely “successful”. Exposing your own family, warts and all, is a brave artistic move in the vein of a Sally Mann. Amazingly, so much photography today just screams, “look at me, look at me!” Aren’t I clever?

Family History

Sophie Barbasch has gotten us to look at her without screaming. And captured it all on film. The honesty and integrity of her images is never over the top. Unless you consider a “complicated” family history with it’s dark, metaphor charged subject matter “over the top”.

Queen City of the Plains

I think a mention of ‘Queen City of the Plains’, another series she’s done, is quite impressive. All the small town/suburban essence that most of America lives daily, is captured with a keen wit and understanding of what many refer to as “flyover country”. Sophie Barbasch uses various cameras, but ‘Fault Line’ was achieved with a Mamiya 645 and Mamiya 7. Visit her site below for more amazing images. With youth on her side, I expect her to be an important photographer in the years to come.

Website