A lot of ine art photographers are snooty about fashion, but not
Barbara Probst, who created the images on the previous pages. Long
before she was commissioned by Marni to shoot its S/S17 campaign,
and before style magazines came calling, she was paying attention to
clothing. ‘I always did,’ she says. ‘I choose every piece consciously.’
Probst was born in Munich but is now based in New York. The
city is central to this shoot, and much of her work, but it’s really the
clothes – selected by Wallpaper’s Isabelle Kountoure and based on
fashion’s current animal-print trend – that proved inspirational here.
‘The prints are quite graphic; they stand out in New York, where there
can be a lot of black and dark colours.’ They sugest the primal nature
of on-the-move New Yorkers. Look at the urban jungle, they say.
Probst works with a transmitter, which allows many cameras to
take a picture simultaneously at the click of a button. Here, she ofers
two perspectives on the same instant. Viewpoints are Probst’s interest –
the main subject of her work is arguably never the human or object,
but the photographic moment, the second where the many shutters
click. It’s a sensitive twist on Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘Decisive
Moment’, and one that oddly suits today’s image-obsessed and CCTV-
observed world, where movements are recorded more than ever.
The format and constraints of our magazine shoot ofered Probst the
chance to contrast images side by side, and to document the passage
of time as a reader lips on. ‘It’s very diferent to having the images on
the wall. When you turn the pages, it’s just perfect for this idea.’
Before taking up photography, Probst studied sculpture, which is,
she says, ‘very much about the point of view’. ‘It’s about space, where
you are, where you stand. You can look at it from any angle. I think
I’ve just never left that idea.’ In previous shoots, Probst has given the
model the transmitter, allowing them to spark the multiple captures.
Her work tends to undermine the notion of the photographer as the
star creator, the owner of the most vital gaze. It questions what
photography is and what it can be – considering not only perspective
and form but broader themes of authorship, ownership and control.
‘I have thought of my work as political because it reveals the
idea that we are all subjective and the way we look at things is very
diferent and not necessarily right or wrong,’ she says. Often the
second picture interferes with the narrative one constructs on viewing
the irst. ‘The story is about the same moment – but there are two
stories, and one is not more important than the other; they have the
same value. They say diferent things but they are all true.’ ∂Barbara Probst on her double takes
Barbara Probst on set
in New York, where
she photographed our
fashion story
(previous pages)
WRITER: LOU STOPPARD ∑ 221
Making Of