What is a Sculptograph?
A “Sculptograph” is a title I use for a series of work that I have been working on using my cell phone. This body of work is an extension of what I have been working on since the mid 1970’s. At that time I was experimenting with ideas that pushed the limits of traditional photography. I was working on a series of B & W images, Rollicord camera ,tripod, darkroom, contact sheets, a very time consuming process, old school. I had an image I really wanted to use but there was a couple things I didn’t want in them. I scratched them out of the negative and printed it with the scratch marks. I found what I had taken away had actually added something new visually. I ended-up ripping apart different negatives and rearranging them in a 4×5 glass negative carrier and making them into prints. I started to do the same thing with SX-70 Polaroids, and have 30 years worth of SX-70 Cut-ups where I would cut-out certain parts and rearrange them in different ways.
One of the things I immediately liked was how I could see my handmark in the image. I think ideas of sculpture, construction, collage, are reflected in my work. I’m also interested in drawing,painting, printmaking and poetry. I constantly experiment with new materials and ways to extend my vision.
I also love the ambiguous nature of photography and its ability to question truth, a notion most people struggle with. I like combining my drawings with everyday urban landscapes, for me they play off an internal/external world, familiar and uncertain, a visual poem. Each image is a single composition, that’s what I work towards each time within my process. I don’t plan much, I react and trust my instincts. The books, zines, and constructions are all ways of extending my vision of composition. ~Barry Roth
About the Artist: Barry Roth is an artist and photographer born in Detroit, Michigan, 1951. Roth received a BFA in 1973 from Rochester Institute of Technology,Rochester, N.Y., and a MFA in 1976 from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. / He is a founding member of the Nightcrawlerz collective and lives in Huntington Woods, Michigan. Barry has been an active part of the Detroit area art community since the mid 1970’s, his work is in the permanent collections of The Cranbrook Museum of Art, Wayne State University Art Collection and The Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
• Check out Roth’s new limited edition artist zine: Persistence of Vision: Sculptographs #1
• A selection of Barry Roth cereal box sculptures, used in Sculptograps are also for sale in our Backroom gallery
• Read more about Roth’s image making at Essay’d
• Follow Roth’s artwork on Instagram
This is really nice and very concise description of what you are doing and how you do it Deborah friedman