Can you introduce yourself?
I’m Barbara Probst, I’m an artist working with photography, I was born in Munich, in Germany, and I’ve been living in New York for the past 20 years.
You first studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, how has it influenced your photographic approach?
I think my photographic work comes right out of my work as a sculptor. Because looking at something from different angles, from different points of view is a sculptural approach. It’s a way of looking that reflects the interest, the view of a sculptor, even though the end result of my work is always very flat – it’s photographs and there’s nothing flatter than a photograph. The viewer is looking at the different photographs of a series, comparing them, assembling them, joining them together. It’s a very active and deliberate process of looking, and by doing that, the viewer creates the notion of a three-dimensional impression in their mind – and that’s a sculpture!
Landscapes, street photography, portraits, nudes… You went through many different styles, why?
I’m not interested in a certain kind of photography. I’m interested in photography in general, in photography as a phenomenon that seemingly and supposedly depicts reality. And this link to reality is actually what made me want to learn more about photography, and want to work more with it. That’s why I worked through all these different genres, to look at it from different sides, and learn more about it. Genres are really interesting to me, because there are categories of fields in art, which have been worked through by artists over centuries. They have been expanded and reinvented. It’s so useful to look at what’s been done already! For example, the still life paintings of the 17th century, which I looked at before I started my own. There is such a rich field of still life paintings. It’s so useful to see and study what is there, what has been done already. And then I’m bringing my own ideas, vocabulary, resources, and make my own still lifes. By doing that, I hope to bring in something that isn’t there yet, something that provides an addition to the genre.
How would you define your creative process? (Why do you use several cameras to shoot the same scene? Installation becomes as important as the images. So what comes first in your artistic approach?)
I get a set of pictures, and these pictures are comparable because they’re from the same moment. So, by comparing these pictures, it becomes quite clear that the link between reality and photography is very thin and fragile. Because every picture from this moment gives me more or less a different take of this moment. But even though, they’re all equal, none of these images is truer, or more at faults than any other. They are equally truthful or false, they all have the same value. It’s kind of a democratic principle. And then it becomes apparent that the viewpoints, angles, settings, framing of the cameras determine the picture. It’s not what’s in front of the camera that determines the picture, but the photographer behind the camera. They decide how reality is translated into an image. So, it is the subjectivity of the photographer which determines the image, and not the objectivity of the world.
By combining several points of view, are you trying to find objectivity – an idea long dismissed by photography?
I create these lies, these photographs – basically lies – and I’m trying to get to something which you may call a truth with these lies. But maybe, ultimately, we can find the most truth in subjectivity, actually. When we look more closely at the conditioning of our perception of the world, our feeling, our sensitivity, our current mood, our life experience, our knowledge and all these influences that come into play when we perceive, and look at the world. When we look at this conditioning more closely, I think we can get closer to the truth. We tend to believe that the world is the way we see it, but if we take our subjectivity into account, we become aware that we only have one of many possible views on the world.
How has cinema influenced your work? Which directors have inspired you, and why?
I feel the closest, I would say, to Jean-Luc Godard, his thinking, and his ideas of movie-making are extremely inspiring to me. I think I look at photography in a similar way that he looks at cinema. I mean he was breaking the rules whenever he could. A good example is when Godard makes, in the middle of a movie, the protagonist turn to the camera and address the viewer. We watch from our comfortable seat, we consume the movie, and, at the moment the actor addresses the viewer, the idea of the viewer consuming the movie totally collapses. It makes the viewer uncomfortable, they become an active and aware part of the movie. I think what he did is really revolutionary, in many ways. Of course, it comes from Bertolt Brecht – he took that – but the way he translated into movies is very inspiring.
Has being a woman influenced your work as an artist in any way?
Perhaps because I’m a woman I choose mostly female protagonists. When I did nude photography, I chose a female dancer, and it was very straight-forward, simple, a very enjoyable way of working together. I also feel that the female protagonist somehow stands in for me in the shoot. Germany is a very male-dominated society and I think it has made me even more focused and determined as an artist.
What advice would you give to a young woman photographer?
As a young artist, it was really important to find this thing in my work, that caught all my attention, my energy, my love and determination. I cannot really name it, but it’s like a key that unlocks all your curiosity and all your focus. You need to find that. Once you’ve found it, you’re not on the surface anymore, you go deeper and deeper into it, which is actually truly your own. It’s a very constructive and rewarding thing.
