Quietude, from Second Glance
With Second Glance, Barbara Cole makes visible the pieces one puts together to create a sense of self.
Cole has always approached photography as a painterly medium elevating storytelling over realism, and in Second Glance she brings this same ethos to the realm of portraiture. Known for obscuring the human face in most if not all her previous work, this series in contrast celebrates the self: its surface, its hidden contours, and its passage through time.
With her use of analog film, wet plate ambrotypes, long exposures and collage, Cole turns these portrait photographs into a sculptural experience, revealing the physicality of the photograph and the 150+ year wet collodion process she is both preserving and modernizing. The result is an atmosphere of timeless bygone eras with imagined characters that inhabit these dreamscapes.
One picture is not enough to capture the multidimensionality of a person. By merging multiple images into one, Cole creates an image that can only exist through such fragmentation and rejoining. Second Glance ultimately forms a mosaic of inner lives and the multitudes that individualize and unite us.
