BARBARA YOSHIDA
P H O T O G R A P H ER
photograph by Robert Vizzini
Lucy Lippard - essay (excerpt)
Yoshida's esthetic choice of nocturnal views eschews the dramatic cloud forms that have become a staple of conventional landscape photography, making it clear that what she is after is not merely the image as such, but its secrets.
Yoshida takes her photography into an unpeopled personal realm where subject and object merge, giving form to the sense of awe that is inescapable when we are confronted by these extraordinary places, but veiling them in the distance that is part of their appeal.
Lucy R. Lippard
Lucy R. Lippard is one of the best art critics and writers working today. She is the author of Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory (1983), Time and Time Again: History, Rephotography and Preservation in the Chaco World (2013, with Peter Goin), and Undermining: A Wild Ride through Land Use, Politics and Art in the Changing West (2014).
Barbara Yoshida is an adventurous traveler and photographer who fills her backpack with tent, sleeping bag, large format camera, film and tripod, then sets out to capture natural forms and spiritual locations in countries from Sweden in the north througout Europe to Portugal, Spain and Italy in the south, then east to Ukraine, Armenia, and Israel, around the Mediterranean to Morocco and west Africa, and even to Japan and Mongolia. Camping with her family in the woods of northern Idaho was an early influence and her interest in the natural world has remained. She started using a camera for her artistic expression after more than twenty years as a painter and six years making sculpture. While pursuing her photographic work, she also spent several years doing printmaking, using photo processes. Photographing the U.S. through a half-dozen artist's residencies for the National Park Service honed her skills working in various weather conditions, and resulted in a series of color landscapes as well as a series of photogravure prints. It was during this time that she began to focus on stones. Following ten years of photographing Neolithic standing stones in moonlight, her monograph, Moon Viewing: Megaliths by Moonlight, has been published by Marquand Books, September 2014.
One of her photographs of a standing stone was selected by Joyce Tenneson for "The View Project" at Naples Museum of Art in Florida. Her photogravures were shown at Atelier Lacourière Frélaut in Paris and seven large moonlight prints were featured at Southeast Museum of Photography in Florida. Her night photography can also be seen in Night and Low-Light Photography: Professional Techniques from Experts for Artistic and Commercial Success.
Yoshida is an American artist, living and working in New York City.
Linda Connor - foreword (excerpt)
[Yoshida] takes our imagination into the night, shows us how we and our planet are rotating against the night sky, and how our sweet sister, the moon, illuminates ancient stones once revered, but exactly how and why is now lost to time. It seems to me that one of the best reasons for art is to draw us toward mystery. Barbara's subtle and elegant pictures certainly do that.
Linda Connor
Linda Connor is admired and respected as both a photographer and educator. She travels all over the planet, photographing spiritual sites. Her recent monograph is entitled Odyssey: The Photographs of Linda Connor (2008, with William L. Fox).