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Barbara Jaffe

Dark Sun

October 6 – November 5, 2022

Black and white image of woman lying on a mattress with a sheer sheet on top of her, her eyes are closed and her hair is splayed out.

Dark Sun Nº64, 2006

Black and white photographic closeup image of woman holding her interlaced fingers to her throat.

Dark Sun, Nº66, 2008

Black and white negative photograph of a man with a fountain pin reading his writing on transparent paper.

Dark Sun Nº24, 1996

Black and white negative photography a well dressed man in a suit and bow tie, from behind and turned away from the camera.

Dark Sun Nº3, 1988

Black and white negative photograph of woman holding and examining a large winged bug under a magnifying glass.

Dark Sun Nº18, 1992

Black and white negative photograph of an orchid plant.

Dark Sun Nº9, 1990

Black and white photographic negative image of a closeup of a hand holding the broken wings of a butterfly.

Dark Sun Nº8, 1990

Black and white negative photograph of a veiled woman holding tarot cards.

Dark Sun Nº2, 1988

Black and white negative photograph of a shirtless man, seen in profile by the ocean shore.

Dark Sun Nº5, 1989

Black and white negative photographic image of woman with short hair sitting and mediating on a mat.

Dark Sun Nº63, 2005

Black and white negative photographic image of a man's face with his eye closed.

Dark Sun Nº1, 1987

Black and white negative photograph of woman holding and examining flowers.

Dark Sun Nº65, 2006

Black and white photographic image of an iris flower.

Dark Sun Nº20, 1994

Black and white negative image of a woman sitting cross legged, sifting sand form her fingers into a box.

Dark Sun Nº62, 2005

Black and white negative photograph of an orchid

Dark Sun Nº58, 2003

Black and white photographic negative of a woman singing at a table with a statue of a bird.

Dark Sun Nº60, 2004

Press Release

"When Barbara Jaffe recently presented me with a copy of her beautiful monograph, DARK SUN, I was deeply struck by how sensual and mysterious her pictures were. Working in a technique that made her prints appear as negatives rather than positives, a process I was familiar with, rooted in the mid 19th century, her pictures hovered on the outer boundaries of representation, providing enough detail to reasonably recognize her subjects, for the most part people she was close to, at the same time suggesting a reality that was more invention than description. Fortunately, this is what I love about photography. Like great music, it often is the instruments that carry the tune, not just the lyrics." - Laurence Miller

Barbara Jaffe’s series DARK SUN embraces the expressive potential of negative photographic images. The reversed tonal values in her prints open up a surprising and sensuous view of the world, as if we are seeing a secret side of things. In 1987, after years of working in color, Jaffe was drawn to the hands-on experimentation offered by her black and white darkroom. Struck by the way one of her photographs seemed utterly transformed when printed as a negative, she initiated her three decade exploration into this process of photographic alchemy. 

In the introduction to her book DARK SUN, curator and critic Lyle Rexer observes that Jaffe’s prints reverse the normal order of things, where typically we understand light to fall on objects: “it is as if the negative unlocked the unknown capacity of objects in the world to emit light.” This inverted quality of light allows us to see things with fresh eyes, revealing the latent spirituality in our everyday world.

 


 

Barbara Jaffe’s work has been widely exhibited, and is in the collection of many museums in the U.S. and abroad, most notably the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum; the Brooklyn Museum; Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium and others.

Her book, DARK SUN, has been acquired by the libraries at Harvard, Yale, NYU, UCLA, MassArt, and over 40 others in Europe and Asia.