FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHER BARBARA COLE
Cole
Light from above. Depth below. The surface between them is where she has always worked.
"There is a certain darkness coupled with the beauty in my pictures. I deal with isolation, loneliness, and serenity primarily to bring people closer to recognising their own emotional wellbeing by relating to mine. There is tremendous strength in recognising the darkness and self-actualising your beauty in spite of it."
She began as a model, then became a fashion editor, and spent ten years building a visual instinct that was always moving toward something else. When digital photography began overshadowing the traditional film she had loved since the 1970s, she sought to preserve her own painterly aesthetic: a way of making photographs that looked more like paintings than documents, more like interior states than external facts. The underwater series she began in the 1990s, shot in her own pool, was the answer she arrived at. She is still making it.
The pool is not a metaphor, though it works as one. It is where she actually goes. The water suspends her subjects between surface and depth, between light from above and darkness below, in a space that has no clear relationship to time or place. The images she makes there have what she calls a timeless quality: they are about romanticism and the nature of transformation, and they belong to no particular decade. Arrival, the photograph that opens this page, is one of them.
Greatest inspirations or influences?
I'm never sure where or how I'll suddenly find inspiration. I'm fairly confident that it will happen when I need it to. In terms of photography, one of my inspirations is Sarah Moon. When I first saw the work she was producing in the 80s and 90s, I understood that photography could be very painterly. That is what I've strived for throughout my career ever since.
Tell us about your creative process.
My creative process is a living thing. As my work evolves from one series to the next, the key is to always stay busy. It's much harder to work from a dead stop.
How did the pandemic affect your creativity?
Pre-Covid my work was exclusively figurative. As an artist you need to keep working, so as lockdowns took place, my series evolved to still life with the caveat that I anthropomorphised my still life flowers. So I still felt I was working with people, in a way, by giving them human names and personalities.
"I look at the art world the same way I look at my underwater work: it always has the capacity to change and evolve and it should."
Barbara ColeYou are an advocate for mental health. What issues do you explore through your work?
There is a certain darkness coupled with the beauty in my pictures. I hope that people will be attracted to that complexity. I deal with isolation, loneliness, and serenity primarily to bring people closer to recognising their own emotional wellbeing by relating to mine. There is tremendous strength in recognising the darkness and self-actualising your beauty in spite of it.
What does wellbeing mean to you?
That is a great question and one that people should probably ask themselves more frequently. I suppose if I'm not agitated, feeling like lashing out at the world for no apparent reason, that's a great start. I don't like to be too scheduled and forced into doing things I don't like. If it affects my mental health, I feel it's an easy call for me to take a step back.
Every morning, I like to ask for help to get through the day. Asking for help is a way to find some humility. Every night, I give thanks for that help. If I miss a day, then I know I'm off the beam on some level. It's a good indicator that I need to regroup.
"The arts are where we tell stories in ways that help us feel connected and human. Art is always relevant in that it's a special language that people engage in to express feelings and thoughts they never knew they had."
Barbara ColeCole is a vocal advocate for mental health, working with organisations like Change Direction and using her photography and platform to create open conversations about her own experiences. Her aim is not to resolve the complexity her images hold but to share it: to point toward important resources by being honest about the darkness in the work and in herself.
"I deal with isolation, loneliness, and serenity primarily to bring people closer to recognising their own emotional wellbeing by relating to mine."
Change Direction ↗ Barbara Cole · Resources ↗Grammy-nominated director and stepson of Ingrid Bergman on whale sharks, WildAid, and making images that change how people see the ocean.
An Antakly Projects deep dive into underwater photography as art form: the light, the suspension, the silence that makes the image possible.
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images courtesy of the artist
