Jeremy Barnard
Eel Grass
Jeremy Barnard has been primarily a practitioner of black and white photography for the past fifty plus years. He is self-taught, his craft having been molded and influenced by the photography and writings of some of the great masters. “My love affair with photography began when I developed my first roll of film and created my first print. I fell in love with the process, the magic.” His passionate pursuit of technical excellence has kept Barnard involved in every step of the photographic process. He retains control even into the presentation stage by doing his own post processing, mounting, matting, and framing.
More than thirty years ago the computer made its appearance in Jeremy's work environment. In the beginning he viewed it as an unnecessarily complex typewriter. As it began to insert itself into the world of photography it was easy to be skeptical about the computer's photographic future, since the early results of digital imaging were disappointing. Things, as we now know, have changed radically in the digital world of photography. Output quality has surpassed that of film. At this point, it has been over thirty years since Jeremy has shot a roll of film, and he's not looking back.
Barnard's approach to his work can best be described as an ongoing process of self discovery. His photographs walk a fine line between abstraction and realism. His early work resulted from a concentration on people, mostly on the street. In his contemporary work he prefers to make photographs that do not contain people. However, his images frequently contain evidence that people have been there, adding an element of mystery. “I like to make pictures that ask more questions than they answer.”
Artist/writer David Raymond wrote in Art New England that Barnard's photographs “not only convey a sense of place, but a sense of time transcending place,...his work is poetic in unexpected ways.”
