Barbara Kasten

Influenced by The Bauhaus and Constructivism, Barbara Kasten explores modes of reorganizing the visual environment. With geometric shapes, mirrors, glass, lighting gels and a lighting crew recruited from the film industry, she creates abstract interpretations of interior spaces and architectural details. Evident in Architectural Site #17, The High Museum is Kasten's use of super-saturated color and dramatic juxtapositions of line, angle, and form. More recently, Kasten has transformed the human form in a series of hazy nudes.

Barbara Kasten was born in 1936 in Chicago. She received her BFA in painting and sculpture from the University of Arizona in Tucson and her MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. Kasten is the recipient of many prestigious awards, and her work has been widely exhibited by major museums in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Her photographs are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; International Center of Photography, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Modern art, Lodz, Poland; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among others. Kasten is a professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago.

Text © Museum of Contemporary Photography, 2018