Barbara ess biography

Barbara Ess, a boundary-pushing photographer, musician, and writer, and the creator of the No Wave experimental media zine Just Another Asshole, died today at the age of seventy-three. Ess was most widely known for her large-scale photographs made using a pinhole camera, a rarity in the art world but a device she used to great effect, producing blurred, haunting images that evoked variously dreamy anxiety, shattered romanticism, and the stuttering disquiet of the late twentieth century.

Born in Brooklyn, Ess earned her BA at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1969 before going on to attend the London School of Film Technique. Returning to New York, she immersed herself in the downtown scene of the time, playing in No Wave bands Disband, the Static, and Y Pants, in which the musicians played toy instruments or in some instances fried-chicken buckets, enhancing their thin and tinkling sounds with electric bass, a Casio keyboard, and, occasionally, a

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Barbara Ess

American photographer (1944–2021)

Barbara Ess (born Barbara Eileen Schwartz; April 4, 1944 – March 4, 2021)^[1][2] was an American pinhole camera photographer, No Wave musician and Just Another Asshole editor. She taught photography at Bard College since 1997; who in 2024, along with the Schwartz family, has established an annual award to assist Bard College photography students in need called The Barbara Ess Fund for Artistic Expression in Photography.^[3]

Education

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Ess earned a B.A. at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and attended the London Film School.^[2]

Photography

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Ess was known primarily for her large-scale ambient and shadowy photographs that were often made with a pinhole camera. They usually were printed with just one earthy color, such as amber, or muted blue-black. They are shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions and reviewed extensively.

Her images are intentionally left v

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Creative lessons from the pioneering no wave photographer Barbara Ess

The groundbreaking artist Barbara Ess was, in the words of Kim Gordon, “a true inspiration, livlig and brave.” Known primarily for her large-scale photographs made with a pinhole camera, Ess experimented with the distorting effects of this medium for decades before turning her attention to reappropriating footage from the övervakning cameras policing the US border. Her mysterious images transformed the spaces and details of everyday life into strange, liminal landscapes and phantasmagoric phenomena, challenging and playing with perceptions of distance and proximity; real and unreal. 

Born in Brooklyn in 1944, Ess was on the cutting edge of New York‘s no wave scene, editing and organising the experimental cult-status zine Just Another Asshole which launched in 1978. She was a prolific collaborator in other mediums too, forming bands and making music with various musicians and artists throughout her bil