Barbara Ess

Ess was known primarily for her large-scale ambient and shadowy photographs that were often made with a pinhole camera. They usually were printed with just one earthy color, such as amber, or muted blue-black. They are shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions and reviewed extensively. Her images are intentionally left vague and unresolved. As such, they initiate a range of emotions from dream anxiety and helplessness, to being captivated by a fantasy and the romantic aesthetic quality of her old-fashioned pinhole method. As The New York Times wrote in 2019, "Ms. Ess’s studied blurriness leaves in place only such facts as she can transmit with certainty." Her pictures hark back to the nineteenth-century approach to fine-art photography known as Pictorialism and to the well-known amateur photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. The Pictorialists and Cameron often included nature, women, and children as subject matter, creating tableau vivant imagery that evoked moody, open-ended narratives. Ess received grants from LINE, Creative Artists Public Service Program, and Kitchen Media, and fellowships from Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts (photography). An early solo exhibition of her photography work was presented at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City in 1985, the same year she participated in a group exhibition entitled Currents that was held at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Ess also had a solo exhibition at The High Museum of Art in Atlanta in 1992 and one in 2003 at the Moore College of Art in Philadelphia. Other significant group shows that she participated in were Postmodern Prints at Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1991 and the Bowery Tribute that was held at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in 2010. Posthumously, her photography work has been included in the exhibition Who You Staring At: Visual culture of the no wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s that was at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2023. Of her intent as a photographer, Ess said "In a way I try to photograph what cannot be photographed."

The Estate of Barbara Ess is represented by the New York City gallery Magenta Plains. In 2019, Magenta Plains presented their first solo exhibition of Ess's work titled Someone To Watch Over Me followed by a second solo presentation of her work titled Inside Out in 2023. Ess' work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Pompidou and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.