Barbara Leven
Since childhood, I have sought to create images. As a teenager and young adult, I avidly studied art. Photography is my preferred medium. Through the viewfinder, I seek to understand my world; to look for things I have never seen before; to see the significance in the ordinary, the beauty in the mundane and the spiritual in the material.
Like an animist, I look for the life force not only in plants and animals, but in places and material objects as well. Ruins are seductive in the stories they have to tell. Every place has its own energy. Every object its own existence. Every moment a charged emotion.
Going out to photograph is like collecting. Only I am collecting images and each image that I add strengthens the whole of the collection. Much of this is done on a subconscious level. I pick a location to visit, such as a forgotten neighborhood of New York City. Sometimes the focus is on dilapidation and ruin, sometimes on still life, sometimes on the people, sometimes the streets. And sometimes the photographs are only a base from which to create something entirely new.
