Barbara Probst (born 1964) is a contemporary artist whose photographic work consists of multiple images of a single scene, shot simultaneously with several cameras via a radio-controlled system. Using a mix of color and black-and-white film, she poses her subjects, positioning each lens at a different angle, and then triggers the cameras’ shutters all at once, creating tableaux of two or more individually framed images. Although the pictures are of the same subject and are taken at the same instant, they provide a range of perspectives.[1] She lives and works in both New York City and Munich.[2] She relocated to New York City in 1997.[3]
Probst experiments with the temporality and point of view of the shot/counter-shot technique of film by presenting multiple photographs of one scene shot simultaneously with several cameras via a radio-controlled release system.[6] As a result, the subject of the work becomes the photographic moment of exposure itself.[7]
"Barbara Probst investigates the many ambiguities inherent to the photographic image. In her work the relationship of the photographic instant to reality is intensified in two distinct ways whereby the captured moment acquires an almost unsettling quality: on the one hand, Barbara Probst abandons the single-eye gaze of the camera and divides it into various points of view. On the other, she multiplies and diversifies the short moment of the shot. Thanks to a radio-controlled release system she can simultaneously trigger the shutters of several cameras pointed at the same event or subject from different angles and various distances. The depictions of each specific instant generated by this method constitute a series. The relationship of single shots to one another within a series is not determined by a common unifying principle or any stylistic markers. There is no formal proximity and no overall theme to tie the works together. Yet the photographs are bound by a tighter but still elusive link, namely the one and only moment of an exposure which is their very subject.[8]"
— Stefan Schessl, "Back to the Beginning", Barbara Probst – Exposures (2002)
Using a radio-controlled release system, or multiple photographers, she simultaneously triggers the shutters of several cameras pointed at the same scene from various viewpoints.[9] The resulting sequences of images suspend time and stretch out the split second. Artistic Director and Publisher of Camera Austria Reinhard Braun writes of this saying:
"Barbara Probst embroils us in different possible interpretations; particularly by apparently focusing on a specific moment in time in the various series, she directs our attention to the time before or after, diverting it away from the meaning of this empictured moment and to the construction of a duration that actually creates the meaning of the action or scene, i.e. that does not give us anything to see but something to think about.[10]"
— Reinhard Braun, "An Exposure of Photography: Barbara Probst’s Exposures", Camera Austria International #85 (2004)
Moreover, Probst employs backdrops, often enlarged stills from well-known movies or landscapes.[11] This enhances the sense of artifice by presenting multiple locations within the same moment.[12] Furthermore, equipment such as cameras, studio lights, tripods are visible in the crossfire of images.[13] These including the photographer(s) themselves become subjects of the moment.
Artforum Critic Brian Scholis asserts her work disregards photography's standard concept of “decisive moment,” and instead references cinema's practice of multiple cameras to create movement and diversion in a "Rashomon-like multiplicity of perspectives".[14]
2024 Barbara Probst. Subjective Evidence, published Hartmann Projects, edited by Kunstmuseum Luzern und FotoFocus/Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, with texts by Stefan Gronert, Fanni Fetzer, Kevin Moore, Hartmann Books, Stuttgart 2024
2019 The Moment in Space, published by Le Bal, Paris and Hartmann Projects, with an essay by Frederic Paul
2017 12 Moments, published by Editions Xavier Barral, with an essay by Robert Hobbs[55]
2016 12 Moments, published by Hartmann Projects, with an essay by Robert Hobbs[56]
2013 Barbara Probst, published by Hatje Cantz, Germany, with texts by Felicity Lunn, Jens Erdman Rasmussen, and Lynne Tillman, and an interview with the artist by Frédéric Paul[57]
2008 Barbara Probst – Exposures, published by Steidl, Germany and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, with an introduction by Karen Irvine, an interview with Johannes Meinhardt and an essay by David Bate[58]
2002 Barbara Probst, published for exhibition at Cuxhavener Kunstverein, Cuxhaven, Germany, with an essay by Stefan Schessl[59]
1998 Welcome, published for exhibition at Frankfurter Kunstverein, Munich, Germany, with an essay by Thomas Dreher[60]
^"New Photography 2006: Jonathan Monk, Barbara Probst, Jules Spinatsch". moma.org. Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved April 15, 2019. German artist Barbara Probst experiments with the temporality and point of view of the shot/counter-shot technique of film by presenting multiple photographs of one scene shot simultaneously with several cameras via a radio-controlled release system.
^Irvine, Karen (April 6, 2007). "Dissected Moments". mocp.org. Museum of Contemporary Photography. Retrieved April 15, 2019. Born in Munich in 1964, she moved to New York in 1997 on a fellowship, staying on to pursue further professional opportunities and to be with the man who became her husband.
^"Barbara Probst - The Moment in Space". le-bal.fr. Le Bal. 4 April 2019. Retrieved April 15, 2019. Barbara Probst studied sculpture at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich and photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
^"Murray Guy: Barbara Probst". murrayguy.com. Murray Guy Gallery. Retrieved April 15, 2019. 1984 to 90 Akademie der Bildende Kunste, Munich, Germany, 1988 to 89, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany
^"New Photography 2006: Jonathan Monk, Barbara Probst, Jules Spinatsch". moma.org. Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved April 15, 2019. German artist Barbara Probst experiments with the temporality and point of view of the shot/counter-shot technique of film by presenting multiple photographs of one scene shot simultaneously with several cameras via a radio-controlled release system.
^Irvine, Karen (April 6, 2007). "Dissected Moments". mocp.org. Museum of Contemporary Photography. Retrieved April 15, 2019. In Exposures Probst displays sensitivity to representational complexity, as she illustrates the myriad ways in which a moment can be depicted, and by extension, experienced.
^Schessl, Stefan (2002). Barbara Probst – Exposures. Cuxhaven: Kunstverein Cuxhaven.
^Irvine, Karen (April 6, 2007). "Dissected Moments". mocp.org. Museum of Contemporary Photography. Retrieved April 15, 2019. Because her clustered pictures depict the same subject from various angles at precisely the same instant—a feat she achieves using radio controls, synchronized cable releases, and sometimes multiple photographers—they invite us to engage in a game of comparing and contrasting the locations of the cameras and photographers who took them.
^Nakamori, Yasufumi (October 2011). "Between Staged and Documentary, Yasufumi Nakamori Meets With Barbara Probst". hcponline.org. Spot Magazine, Houston Center for Photography. Retrieved April 15, 2019. The prismatic effect is heightened when backdrops, often enlarged stills from well-known movies are employed, or when you choose to shoot at an outside location in Manhattan.
^Nakamori, Yasufumi (October 2011). "Between Staged and Documentary, Yasufumi Nakamori Meets With Barbara Probst". hcponline.org. Spot Magazine, Houston Center for Photography. Retrieved April 15, 2019. Each image tells the same story in a different way, yet at the same time it carries the same amount of "truth" as the others in the series. This contradiction blanks out the narrative of the images and turns them into a facade without a construction. These circumstances cannot be investigated in film, because the images in film are in chronological sequence and not simultaneous.
^Nakamori, Yasufumi (October 2011). "Between Staged and Documentary, Yasufumi Nakamori Meets With Barbara Probst". hcponline.org. Spot Magazine, Houston Center for Photography. Retrieved April 15, 2019. Both illusion and device are always manifest cameras, studio lights, tripods are often all visible, as if you are not interested in creating a seamless image of constructed reality, or a constructed moment.
^Scholis, Brian (May 2006). "Barbara Probst at Murray Guy". artforum.com. Artforum. Retrieved April 17, 2019. The Rashomon-like multiplicity of perspectives synthetically prolongs the cameras' "decisive moment," and this clash of temporal registers was the exhibition's most salient quality.
^"Barbara Probst - Total Uncertainty". galerierudolfinum.cz. Galerie Rudolfinum. Retrieved April 15, 2019. In presenting Probst's visually rich and conceptually rooted work, Galerie Rudolfinum follows up on its series of solo exhibitions by photographers such as Jürgen Klauke, Gregory Crewdson, Shirana Shahbazi, and Bernd and Hilla Becher.
^"Barbara Probst". pasquart.ch. Pasquart Kunsthaus. Retrieved April 15, 2019. The exhibition and accompanying publication are a collaboration between the Kunsthaus CentrePasquArt, the Centre for Photography, Copenhagen and Rudolfinum, Prague.
^"Barbara Probst". kb.dk. Der KGL Bibliotek. Retrieved April 15, 2019. The exhibition in the National Museum of Photography presents pieces created between 2005 and 2012 from the series Exposures, and will be the artist's first solo exhibition in Denmark.
^"Oldenburger Kunstverein:Barbara Probst". oldenburger-kunstverein.de. Oldenburger Kunstverein. Retrieved April 15, 2019. Die Fotografin Barbara Probst untersucht die Vieldeutigkeit und Fragwürdigkeit des fotografischen Bildes.
^"Barbara Probst". stills.org. Stills Gallery. Retrieved April 15, 2019.
^"Barbara Probst". paris-art.com. Paris Art. 2 October 2008. Retrieved April 15, 2019.
^Smith, Jennifer (December 16, 2008). "Photographic juxtapositions in Barbara Probst exhibit at MMoCA". isthmus.com. Isthmus. Retrieved April 15, 2019. In a new exhibition at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, German-born photographer Barbara Probst confronts these issues in ways that are not only visually appealing but also offer, at times, an understated humor.
^"Barbara Probst: Exposures". mocp.org. Museum of Contemporary Photography. 2 October 2008. Retrieved April 15, 2019.
^"Perfect Likeness: Photography and Composition". hammer.ucla.edu. The Hammer Museum, UCLA. Retrieved April 15, 2019. Since the late 1970s, however, a number of photographers have been engaged with a renewed investigation of composition and thus, inevitably, with the historically devalued concept of the pictorial. These include Thomas Demand, Stan Douglas, Roe Ethridge, Andreas Gursky, Annette Kelm, Elad Lassry, Florian Maier-Aichen, Barbara Probst, Jeff Wall, and Christopher Williams, among others.
^"Eyes on the Street". cincinnatiartmuseum.org. Cincinnati Art Museum. Retrieved April 15, 2019. Artist list: Olivo Barbieri, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Jason Evans, Paul Graham, Mark Lewis, Jill Magid, James Nares, Barbara Probst, Jennifer West, Michael Wolf
^"(Mis)Understanding Photography Works and Manifestos". museum-folkwang.de. Museum Folkwang. Retrieved April 15, 2019. Participating artists Works: Claudia Angelmaier, Michael Badura, Sylvia Ballhause, Laura Bielau, Viktoria Binschtok, Kristleifur Björnsson, Bernhard Blume, Christian Boltanski, Günter Karl Bose, Johannes Brus, Michel Campeau, Sarah Charlesworth, Jojakim Cortis & Adrian Sonderegger, Tacita Dean, Bogomir Ecker, Hans Eijkelboom, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Joan Fontcuberta, Florian Freier, Katharina Gaenssler, Jochen Gerz, G.R.A.M., Aneta Grzeszykowska, Jeff Guess, Rudolf Herz, John Hilliard, Alfredo Jaar, Kenneth Josephson, Erik Kessels, Jochen Lempert, Zoe Leonard, Les Levine, Zbigniew Libera, Stanislaw Markowski, Santu Mofokeng, Ugo Mulas, Andreas Müller-Pohle, Renate Heyne & Floris M. Neusüss, Peter Piller, Steven Pippin, Richard Prince, Barbara Probst, Arnulf Rainer, Timm Rautert, Benjamin Rinner, Józef Robakowski, Thomas Ruff, Ed Ruscha, Adrian Sauer, Joachim Schmid, Pavel Maria Smejkal, Michael Snow, Clare Strand, Larry Sultan & Mike Mandel, Vibeke Tandberg, Ulrich Tillmann & Wolfgang Vollmer, Wolfgang Tillmans, Axel Töpfer, Timm Ulrichs, Franco Vaccari, Matthias Wähner, Gillian Wearing, Jan Wenzel, Christopher Williams, Akram Zaatari
^"Per Speculum Me Video". fkv.de. Frankfurter Kunstverein. Retrieved April 15, 2019. Participating artists: Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz (CH/DE, Berlin), Martin Brand (DE, Köln), Manuela Kasemir (DE, Leipzig), Sabine Marte (AT, Wien), Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (CA, Berlin), Barbara Probst (DE, New York), Johanna Reich (DE, Köln), Eva Weingärtner (DE, Offenbach), Gilda Weller (DE, Frankfurt)
^"Lost Places". hamburger-kunsthalle.de. Hamburger Kunsthalle. Retrieved April 15, 2019. The exhibition features the following artists among others: Thomas Demand (1964), Omer Fast (1972), Beate Gütschow (1970), Andreas Gursky (1955), Candida Höfer (1944), Sabine Hornig (1964), Jan Köchermann (1967), Barbara Probst (1964)
^"Mixed Use, Manhattan, Photography and Related Practices 1970s to the present". museoreinasofia.es. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. Retrieved April 15, 2019. Artists:Alvin Baltrop, Bernd Becher, Hilla Becher, Dara Birnbaum, Jennifer Bolande, Stefan Brecht, Matthew Buckingham, Tom Burr, Roy Colmer, Moyra Davey, Terry Fox, William Gedney, Bernard Guillot, David Hammons, Sharon Hayes, Peter Hujar, Joan Jonas, Janos Kender, Louise Lawler, Zoe Leonard, Sol LeWitt, Glenn Ligon, Robert Longo, Vera Lutter, Danny Lyon, Babette Mangolte, Gordon Matta-Clark, Steve McQueen, John Miller, Donald Moffett, James Nares, Max Neuhaus, Catherine Opie, Gabriel Orozco, Barbara Probst, Emily Roysdon, Cindy Sherman, Charles Simonds, Thomas Struth, James Welling, David Wojnarowicz, Christopher Wool
^"SFMOMA to Present Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and The Camera Since 1870". artdaily.com. Art Daily. Retrieved April 15, 2019. From shots used to identify suffragettes and anarchists to prisoner Rudolf Cisar's clandestine views of Dachau, photography has been crucial to a wide variety of surveillance projects, both political and private. This section juxtaposes FBI photographs and military reconnaissance shots with work by contemporary artists who have critiqued or appropriated the technologies of surveillance, including Jordan Crandall, Bruce Nauman, Barbara Probst, and Thomas Ruff.
^"New Photography 2006: Jonathan Monk, Barbara Probst, Jules Spinatsch". moma.org. Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved April 15, 2019. German artist Barbara Probst experiments with the temporality and point of view of the shot/counter-shot technique of film by presenting multiple photographs of one scene shot simultaneously with several cameras via a radio-controlled release system.
^Gaertner, Jonna (January 30, 2013). "Kommentare Zur Ausstellung". lenbachhaus.de. Lenbechhaus. Retrieved April 16, 2019. KUNST IST … SCHÖN, wenn sie einen anspricht. „Besonders gut hat mir die Bilderreihe von Barbara Probst gefallen! Sehr gut zum Mitraten und überlegen, was passiert ist!"
^Stathaki, Ellie (June 14, 2018). "We go people watching at Annabelle Selldorf's 42 Crosby". wallpaper.com. Wallpaper Magazine. Retrieved April 17, 2019. elldorf's sophisticated approach and the building's strategic location – a stone's throw from Soho's busiest streets, yet at a slightly calmer part of town – made it the perfect setting for our main July issue fashion story, 'Double Take', shot by renowned German artist and conceptual photographer Barbara Probst, expertly mixing streetlife scenes with chic animal prints.
^"Out Now: Remastered". amodernmatter.com. Modern Matter. December 12, 2018. Retrieved April 17, 2019. Fashion by Barbara Probst.
^"16 Cameras Capture One Fashion Moment at Philip Johnson's Glass House". garage.vice.com. Garage Magazine. September 4, 2018. Retrieved September 4, 2018. At 199 Elm Street, New Canaan, CT, on 18 April 2018, at 4:12:32 p.m., Barbara Probst fired 16 cameras, all at once, for this Fall fashion story at the famed architectural landmark.
^Tindle, Hannah (February 15, 2017). "The Photographer Behind Marni's Mischievous S/S17 Campaign". anothermag.com. AnOther. Retrieved April 17, 2019. Barbara Probst is renowned for producing images that comment upon the seductive and illusory effect that photography so often employs. Cameras, studio lights and photographic equipment are intentionally made visible in her work and, as a consequence, the processes of image making become exposed to the viewer. When she began to work with the medium, Probst was initially interested in dissecting what a photograph actually is and how it functions, finding interest not in the subject itself, but rather in the many ways she could document it. Fascinated by the fact that there are countless ways of representing one and the same moment depending on the decisions of the photographer, she exploited this intrigue for the Marni S/S17 campaign, creating a mischievous subversion of the fashion photoshoot, with models appearing to turn the lens back onto her. Here, Probst speaks with AnOther about balancing photographic power, challenging the limitations of one-dimensional storytelling and some of the practitioners that so inspire what she does.
^Macchia, Di Susanna (July 25, 2017). "Intervista a Barbara Probst". vogue.it. Vogue Italia. Retrieved April 17, 2019. Fotografa e visual artist, Barbara Probst ha ritratto per "Vogue" (p.110) due ragazze identiche, usando due macchine fotografiche in simultanea: un inedito, duplice punto di vista.
^Hobbs, Robert (2016), Barbara Probst: 12 Moments, Stuttgart, Germany: Hartmann Books, p. 63, ISBN9783960700050
^Tillman, Lynne; Lunn, Felicity; Rasmussen, Jens Erdman; Frederic, Paul (2014), Barbara Probst, Germany: Hatje Cantz, p. 240, ISBN978-3775737111
^Irvine, Karen; Meinhardt, Johannes; Bate, David (2008), Barbara Probst Exposures, Göttingen, German, Chicago, IL: Steidl and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, p. 108, ISBN9783865213921
^Schessl, Stephan (2002), Barbara Probst (in German) (1000 copies made 1st ed.), Cuxhaven, Germany: Kunstverein Cuxhaven, p. 27
^Dreher, Thomas (1998), Welcome (in German) (1000 copies made 1st ed.), Munich, Germany: Frankfurter Kunstverein, p. 19
^Dreher, Thomas (1998), Through The Looking Glass (in German) (1000 copies made 1st ed.), Dessau, Germany: Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie Dessau, p. 19
^Hofstetter, Michael (1998), Barbara Probst (in German) (1000 copies made 1st ed.), Munich Germany: Akadamiegalerie Munich, p. 10
^Dreher, Thomas (1998), InExpectation (in German) (1000 copies made 1st ed.), Munich Germany: Binder & Rid Gallery, p. 19
^Barbara Probst, My Museum (in German) (600 copies made 1st ed.), Munich Germany: Kulturreferat München, 1994, p. 14
