Japanese Couple

Barbara Bloom’s focus on minute detail stems from her

interest in the implicit, in possible meanings—hers is a

“detective gaze.” Bloom employs ambiguity and suggestion

to investigate how we bestow value and meaning onto

images and objects and how we view, remember, collect,

and consume them. Here a folding screen partially cordons

off a single, shadowy photograph of a Japanese couple. The

screen alternately shields the picture from view or invites

intimate, even private engagement. The work emphasizes

the physicality in the act of seeing and renders the viewer

complicit, not merely as voyeurs but as full participants in

an exchange between the subject and object of spectatorship.

“Can we,” Bloom asks, “think of images or objects

as the recipients of a gaze, aware of our looking at them,

affected by our looking?”