Photogenic Painting Untitled 76/7, 1976

Cyanotype, Van Dyke brown print, and ink
© Barbara Kasten; courtesy the artist, Bortolami, New York and Thomas Dane Gallery.

Barbara Kasten is known for an unusual photographic practice that incorporates painterly, sculptural, and performative techniques. In 1974 her explorations led to the Photogenic Painting series—her first photographic (albeit cameraless) works and the foundations of an experimental engagement with still life that has remained central to her practice ever since. In each of these “paintings”—actually photograms—abstract patterns of varying degrees of translucency appear against a ground that is typically blue. To create the images, Kasten brushed the chemical mixture required for the cyanotype process onto a sheet of paper and placed fiberglass mesh over it. After exposure to light and a water rinse, the parts of the paper that had been exposed to light turned blue, while the areas that had been protected by the fiberglass material remained white. By the time she made this work, Kasten had begun to combine cyanotype chemicals with washes of ink, silkscreen printing, and other photographic processes.