Paris Photo 2023
November 9 – 12, 2023
Large White Bottle and Shadow (from the series Morandi's Books), 2022. Archival pigment print, available as 13 x 18 inches and 23 x 32 inches.
Ingres Collage (from the series Morandi's Books), 2022. Archival pigment print, available as 13 x 18 inches and 23 x 32 inches.
Painted Vase (from the series Morandi's Books), 2022. Archival pigment print, available as 12 x 18 inches and 21 x 32 inches.
Corot and Ingres (from the series Morandi's Books), 2022. Archival pigment print, available as 12 x 18 inches and 21 x 32 inches.
Vermeer Glassine (from the series Morandi's Books), 2022. Archival pigment print, 13 x 18 inches.
Angelico (from the series Morandi's Books), 2022. Archival pigment print, available as 13 x 18 inches and 23 x 32 inches.
Three Pale Books (from the series Morandi's Books), 2022. Archival pigment print, 13 x 18 inches.
Two Cezannes Gold Piece (from the series Morandi's Books), 2022. Archival pigment print, available as 13 x 18 inches and 23 x 32 inches.
Reading Color #17 (from the series Reading in Color), 2020. Archival pigment print, 13 x 18 inches.
Summer Reading #9 (from the series Reading in Color), 2019. Archival pigment print, 13 x 18 inches.
Summer Reading #13 (from the series Reading in Color), 2019. Archival pigment print, 13 x 18 inches.
Summer Reading #14 (from the series Reading in Color), 2019. Archival pigment print, 13 x 18 inches.
Summer Reading #12 (from the series Reading in Color), 2019. Archival pigment print, 13 x 18 inches.
Summer Reading #16 (from the series Reading in Color), 2019. Archival pigment print, 13 x 18 inches.
Summer Reading #11 (from the series Reading in Color), 2019. Archival pigment print, 13 x 18 inches.
Two Corners (from the series Reading in Color), 2019. Archival pigment print, 13 x 18 inches.
Red Cloth Cover, from the series Reading Grey Gardens, 2017. Archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
Why Men Like Us, from the series Reading Grey Gardens, 2017. Archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
Mutiny on the Bounty, from the series Reading Grey Gardens, 2017. Archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
Cats, from the series Reading Grey Gardens, 2017. Archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
Shandygaff, from the series Reading Grey Gardens, 2017. Archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
Release from Nervous Tension, from the series Reading Grey Gardens, 2017. Archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
Vitality, from the series Reading Grey Gardens, 2017. Archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
Frankenstein, from the series Reading Grey Gardens, 2017. Archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
Untitled 56, from the series Paperbacks, 2014. Archival pigment print, 16 x 22 inches.
Untitled 49, from the series Paperbacks, 2010. Archival pigment print, 16 x 22 inches.
Untitled 22, from the series Paperbacks, 2009. Archival pigment print, 16 x 22 inches.
Untitled 44, from the series Paperbacks, 2010. Archival pigment print, 16 x 22 inches.
Untitled 58, from the series Paperbacks, 2014. Archival pigment print, 18 x 27 inches.
Untitled 55, from the series Paperbacks, 2013. Archival pigment print, 16 x 22 inches.
Untitled 48, from the series Paperbacks, 2009. Archival pigment print, 16 x 22 inches.
Untitled 5, from the series Paperbacks, 2009. Archival pigment print, 16 x 22 inches.
The Modernists, from the series Jackson Pollock's Books, 2018. Photograph of collaged photographs, archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems, from the series Jackson Pollock's Books, 2018. Photograph of collaged photographs, archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
The Museum of Modern Art, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary, from the series Jackson Pollock's Books, 2018. Photograph of collaged photographs, archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
Pelican Primitive Art, from the series Jackson Pollock's Books, 2018. Photograph of collaged photographs, archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
James Joyce, Ulysses, from the series Jackson Pollock's Books, 2018. Photograph of collaged photographs, archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
Small Picasso, from the series Jackson Pollock's Books, 2018. Photograph of collaged photographs, archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
Kafka, Metamorphosis, from the series Jackson Pollock's Books, 2018. Photograph of collaged photographs, archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
El Greco, from the series Jackson Pollock's Books, 2018. Photograph of collaged photographs, archival pigment print, 20 3/4 x 17 inches.
Diebenkorn Blues, from the series Blue Books, 2004. Archival pigment print, 28 x 35, 20 x 25, or 14 1/2 x 18 inches.
Beyond Summer, from the series Blue Books, 2010. Archival pigment print, 28 x 35, 20 x 25, or 14 1/2 x 18 inches.
Easy Hymns, from the series Blue Books, 2010. Archival pigment print, 28 x 35, 20 x 25, or 14 1/2 x 18 inches.
Blue Books on Green, from the series Blue Books, 2010. Archival pigment print, 28 x 35, 20 x 25, or 14 1/2 x 18 inches.
Mary Ellen Bartley is known for her photographs exploring the tactile and formal qualities of the printed book, and its potential for abstraction. Bartley’s work concerns itself with geometry and pure form; painterly in style, her photos also invite curiosity about the layered histories of the books themselves. Her photos are alive with questions – about what we do and don’t see and the stories we tell. Yet the spirit of her work provides a reflective response, a respite, from a noisy and chaotic world. By emphasizing the unique “aura” and materiality of printed matter, Bartley’s work offers a celebration of textural and tactile properties, a particularly potent act in this increasingly digital age.
Alongside her minimalist studio arrangements of anonymous books chosen for their specific physical qualities, represented in series like: Paperbacks, Reading in Color and Blue Books, are the projects realized in unique libraries and archives where she responds to collections and their habitats, developing projects over time spent with them. Bartley was a Watermill Center 2015 Artist in Residence and worked with the library there to create the installation and book Reading Robert Wilson. In 2017, she created the installation Library Copies at The Queens Museum working with Andrew Beccone's Reanimation Library. Her series Reading Grey Gardens both archived and reinvented the collection of books at the famed East Hampton estate.
Bartley also worked with the library and music archives at The Pollock Krasner House in Springs, NY. Most recently she was invited to work with the personal library of Giorgio Morandi, the twentieth-century Italian artist whose quiet still life paintings have been an essential source of inspiration from the beginning of her practice. The resulting series Morandi’s Books — meditative, quiet and rigorously observed, affirms her affinities with the painter and furthers her open-ended investigations of artists’ relationships to their books.
Born in New York, NY, in 1959, Bartley received her BFA from Purchase College, SUNY, and she lives and works in Sag Harbor, NY. Her work has been exhibited in numerous institutions including The Queens Museum, NY; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Houston Center for Photography, TX; The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY; The Watermill Center, NY; and National Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, Guatemala City. Bartley has taken part in numerous residencies, including Casa Morandi, Bologna, Italy; The Queens Museum, NY; Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY; Penumbra Foundation, New York, NY; and Watermill Center, NY. Bartley's work is in numerous collections, including Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY; McEvoy Family Collection, McEvoy Foundation, San Francisco, CA; MoMA Library Special Collections, New York, NY; Parrish Art Museum, Watermill, NY; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; The Watermill Collection, Watermill, NY.
Library Copies
Library Copies is a culmination of work over the past three months as a visiting artist in the Reanimation Library currently housed at the Queens Museum. The windowless library inspired a new series of images generated using the library's black and white photocopier.
Ordinary Pictures
Featuring works by some 45 artists, Ordinary Pictures surveys a range of conceptual picture-based practices since the 1960s through the lens of the stock photograph and other forms of industrial image production. Despite its apparent throwaway status, the stock image is the primary commodity of a $1 billion global industry with far-reaching effects in the marketplace and the public sphere.
