BEAR PAWS by Barbara Bosworth

1994
From the series One Star and a Dark Voyage
Archival pigment print
16 × 20 in
Edition of 7
Framed

“This work began as a way for me to think about life and death and about our ties with nature and our utter dependence on earth, and later, after the death of a loved one, blurred into images about the exquisite fragility of life, about loss and longing… I began looking for light in the darkness. Fireflies as I try to hold onto the light. The simple beauty of light falling on leaves. A rainbow, the sunset, the Milky Way.” 

—Barbara Bosworth

In One Star and a Dark Voyage, the much-heralded photographer Barbara Bosworth has interwoven the visceral and ethereal to visually build a sense of the delicate and fragile nature of life, at a place where the edges of heaven and earth blur. These pictures, made with Bosworth’s customary 8×10 camera, speak to our connections with nature: bear paws hauntingly human, roses cut to bring beauty indoors, names carved into a tree trunk declaring one’s love forever.

Whether chronicling the efforts of hunters or bird banders or evoking the seasonal changes that transform mountains and meadows, Bosworth’s careful and caring attention to the world around her results in images that inspire viewers to look closely. Her single images display generous attention to detail, while her large-scale triptychs offer a panoramic perspective. All of Bosworth’s projects remind viewers that we shape nature and, in turn, are shaped by it. 

Barbara Bosworth (born 1953 in Cleveland, Ohio) grew up in Novelty, Ohio. As of the release of Lucid Pleasures, the artist, photographer, and education lives and works in Massachusetts, where she is a professor emeritus of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. She is recognized for her large-format images that explore both overt and subtle relationships between humans and the natural world. An inherent part of her creative process is an extension of the slowed nature of working in film, in which she can conscientiously take her time studying the landscapes, and the beings within them, that she encounters. 

Her work has been widely exhibited, notably in exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Cleveland Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, and Peabody Essex Museum. Her publications include Some Lights Are From Fires (Dust Collective, 2024), The Sea (Radius Books, 2022), One Star and a Dark Voyage (TIS Books, 2021), The Meadow (Radius Books, 2015), Behold (Datz Press, 2014), and Trees: National Champions (MIT Press; Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, 2005).

Archival pigment prints use refined pigment particles to create exquisite, high-resolution artwork. This printing method creates museum-quality artwork designed to last; ink and paper are critical elements in an archival pigment print’s life span.