Barbara Bosworth: The Heavens
Each of her hour-long exposures transport me to the time and place when I saw that hot white streak burn across the sky, or admired the filtered light of the moon through silhouetted forest, or felt a crushing smallness while gazing at some far away galaxy.
— Julia Bennett, Lenscratch
Made over the past several years with an 8 × 10-inch field camera, Barbara Bosworth’s photographs of stars are hour-long exposures with the camera mounted on a clock drive. Her sun and moon images are made with a telescope attached to her camera.
Speaking of her inspiration for these images, Bosworth writes: “Every clear night of the summer my father would go out for a walk to look at the night sky. Many nights I would join him. We knew the North Star, and the Big Bear, but the rest became our own. At times we stood still for an hour or more to watch for shooting stars. We had no agenda. It was all about amazement at a sky full of stars. With this sense of wonder, I began making photographs of the Heavens. In these days of the Hubble Telescope and its spectacular imagery from deep space, I wanted a reminder of the mystery of our own night sky.”
The book also includes facsimile editions of three artist’s books that Bosworth has made as a nod to Galileo’s seventeenth-century publications in which he first observed the skies through a telescope.
Limited edition of this book available is sold out.
Each of her hour-long exposures transport me to the time and place when I saw that hot white streak burn across the sky, or admired the filtered light of the moon through silhouetted forest, or felt a crushing smallness while gazing at some far away galaxy.
— Julia Bennett, Lenscratch
Made over the past several years with an 8 × 10-inch field camera, Barbara Bosworth’s photographs of stars are hour-long exposures with the camera mounted on a clock drive. Her sun and moon images are made with a telescope attached to her camera.
Speaking of her inspiration for these images, Bosworth writes: “Every clear night of the summer my father would go out for a walk to look at the night sky. Many nights I would join him. We knew the North Star, and the Big Bear, but the rest became our own. At times we stood still for an hour or more to watch for shooting stars. We had no agenda. It was all about amazement at a sky full of stars. With this sense of wonder, I began making photographs of the Heavens. In these days of the Hubble Telescope and its spectacular imagery from deep space, I wanted a reminder of the mystery of our own night sky.”
The book also includes facsimile editions of three artist’s books that Bosworth has made as a nod to Galileo’s seventeenth-century publications in which he first observed the skies through a telescope.
Limited edition of this book available is sold out.
Each of her hour-long exposures transport me to the time and place when I saw that hot white streak burn across the sky, or admired the filtered light of the moon through silhouetted forest, or felt a crushing smallness while gazing at some far away galaxy.
— Julia Bennett, Lenscratch
Made over the past several years with an 8 × 10-inch field camera, Barbara Bosworth’s photographs of stars are hour-long exposures with the camera mounted on a clock drive. Her sun and moon images are made with a telescope attached to her camera.
Speaking of her inspiration for these images, Bosworth writes: “Every clear night of the summer my father would go out for a walk to look at the night sky. Many nights I would join him. We knew the North Star, and the Big Bear, but the rest became our own. At times we stood still for an hour or more to watch for shooting stars. We had no agenda. It was all about amazement at a sky full of stars. With this sense of wonder, I began making photographs of the Heavens. In these days of the Hubble Telescope and its spectacular imagery from deep space, I wanted a reminder of the mystery of our own night sky.”
The book also includes facsimile editions of three artist’s books that Bosworth has made as a nod to Galileo’s seventeenth-century publications in which he first observed the skies through a telescope.
Limited edition of this book available is sold out.
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Photography by Barbara Bosworth
Text by Margot Anne Kelley, Joanne Lukitsh, and Owen GingerichHardcover with jacket
10.25 x 12.75 inches
200 pages / 60 imagesISBN: 9781942185406
Rare: $250
SOLD OUT -
Barbara Bosworth is a photographer whose large-format images explore both overt and subtle relationships between humans and the natural world.
Whether chronicling the efforts of hunters or bird banders or evoking the seasonal changes that transform mountains and meadows, Bosworth’s caring attention to the world around her results in images that inspire viewers to look closely. Her single images display generous attention to detail, while her large-scale triptychs offer a panoramic perspective. All of Bosworth’s projects remind viewers that we shape nature and, in turn, are shaped by it.
Bosworth grew up in Novelty, Ohio. She currently lives in Massachusetts, where she is a professor emeritus of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston.
Bosworth’s work has been widely exhibited, notably in exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Cleveland Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, and Peabody Essex Museum.
Her publications include Some Lights Are From Fires (Dust Collective, 2024), The Sea (Radius Books, 2022), One Star and a Dark Voyage (TIS Books, 2021), The Meadow (Radius Books, 2015), Behold (Datz Press, 2014), and Trees: National Champions (MIT Press; Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, 2005).