Displaced Perspectives
combines still photography with
installation art to offer a
fascinating look at this innovative
young artist's original and
inventive method of both
constructing and deconstructing
complex photographic spaces.
Baer's large color photographs are bafflingly bizarre spaces formed as the result of
ingenious set construction combined with view camera technology. Baer's work begins with
the building of large and elaborate labor and time intensive sets that take months to
complete. These temporary sets are then photographed with a view camera, the resulting
image a conglomeration of collapsed and confused planes, ambiguous scale, obsessive
detail and soft-focus created by the view camera's tilts and swings. In the age of the digitally
altered photograph, Baer's images are a testament to pre-visualization and pure
photography.
For Displaced Perspectives, Baer will reconstruct in the museum's main gallery the set for
his latest photograph. This finished photograph will be displayed, along with eight earlier
images, on the mezzanine bridge overlooking the installation. Museum-goers will thus be
offered the unique opportunity to simultaneously experience the actual constructed space
and the finished product.
Baer earned his BFA in Photography from the State University of New York at Purchase in
1991 and has participated in a number of group shows. He is the recipient of the New York
Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship, and the J.S.
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
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