Biography
Joseph Bartscherer (b. New York, USA 1954 - d. 2020) studied photography at Harvard University under the mentorship of Ben Lifson and at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax where he was Robert Frank’s teaching assistant and where he participated in the experimental aesthetic that permeated the school in the 1970s. He moved back tio New York in the early 1990s and set up a studio in SoHO. “Pioneering Mattawa” was shown at the Museum of Modern Art’s New Photography 11 in 1995, installed in grids three rows high and six columns wide. He has udes a special developer, Beers, which is made from component chemicals, so that by varying the primary ingredients, metol and hydroquinone, the photographer can precisely control the light and dark values of the print. He is best known for Obituary, for which Bartscherer collected hundreds of issues of the New York Times whose front pages featured photographs of someone whose obituary featured. It was begun in 1990, installed in groups of six complete newspapers, unfolded, faceup, on clear sheets of Plexiglas parallel to the floor, and was still ongoing at the time of the conceptual photographer's death.
Bartscherer was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts grants. His works were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Yale University Gallery and the Photographer's Gallery in London. During 1997 and 1998, he travelled the canal which stretches between Liverpool and Leeds in the transpennine region of northern England. Built in the late 18th and 19th centuries, this canal provides the focus for Bartscherer's work, which examines the natural topography of the transpennine region and the industrial culture whose growth and decline has, to a great extent, determined its present day look. Three photographs from the whole Canal projects were given to Leeds Art Gallery in 2000.
