Mary Ellen Bartley, Photographer
[0:01]Hi, this is Ziggy Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast.
[0:05]Moms don't have time to read books, and speaking of books, I have two of my own books
[0:10]coming out this spring and summer.
[0:12]Princess Charming is a picture book which debuts on April 19th, and bookends.
[0:17]A memoir of love, loss, and literature comes out on July 1st, and it is truly a labor of love.
[0:24]I hope you'll pre-order, order, and join me on tour as I go across the country.
[0:28]You can find out more at zibbyowens.com or bookendsmemoir.com, and you can follow me on Instagram
[0:35]at zibbyowens because I always post about everything.
[0:38]Enjoy the show!
[0:41]So this is a bit of a non-traditional episode.
[0:44]Mary Ellen Bartley is not an author, but a photographer of books.
[0:48]I thought it would be really interesting for all of you to hear about her perspective on books
[0:53]and how she views them as objects, and also her photographs are like my favorite things
[0:57]in the world.
[0:58]So I wanted you to hear from her, as far as bio goes, Mary Ellen Bartley is known for
[1:02]her photographs exploring the tactile and formal qualities of the printed book and its
[1:07]potential for abstraction.
[1:08]She is exhibited in numerous institutions, including the Queen's Museum, the Walker Arts
[1:12]Center, Houston Center for Photography, Parish Art Museum, and the Water Mill Center.
[1:16]One aspect of her practice is working in unique libraries and archives where she responds
[1:21]to collections and their habitats.
[1:22]Bartley has realized projects in the private libraries of artists such as Robert Wilson,
[1:26]Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and most recently, the Italian painter, Georgie O'Maroni.
[1:31]Born in New York in 1959, Bartley received a BFA from purchase college and lives and works
[1:37]in Sagarber, New York.
[1:38]She is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York and the drawing room gallery
[1:42]in East Hampton, New York.
[1:44]Enjoy this very special episode and then go online at Mary Ellen Bartley.
[1:49]I think with underscores and go check out her work, she is amazing, Mary Ellen Bartley.com.
[1:54]All right.
[1:55]Welcome.
[1:56]Thank you so much for coming on Moms.
[1:57]Don't have time to read books.
[1:59]This is a very exciting episode for me, a little bit different, so thank you for rolling
[2:04]with it and coming on my show.
[2:06]Oh, it's so fun.
[2:08]I think your energy is so awesome and since I've met you, I've just been exploring your
[2:13]whole kind of world and where we intersect and it's really, really cool.
[2:18]Amazing.
[2:19]So for listeners, let me just tell you this story, I can't even remember how I found your
[2:26]photographs originally.
[2:27]I'm trying to remember, but I came, oh, I feel like they were maybe in the drawing room
[2:32]in East Hampton.
[2:33]No, maybe the first R.D.N.C. Richardson in Chelsea.
[2:37]Okay.
[2:38]Well, anyway, I saw him in Sagarber Gallery and all of your work that I have fallen in
[2:43]love with is about books, stacks of books, stacks of white books, which is what I ended
[2:48]up buying stacks of colored books now.
[2:51]You treat books as an artistic artifact, everything from the spines to the pages inside
[2:59]outside and you make it into this gorgeous visual thing.
[3:05]And so I, of course, fell in love with these as I am such a huge book lover.
[3:08]I fell in love with your photos and then, you know, we started reaching out, talking to
[3:13]each other on Instagram as we do at the state age.
[3:17]And then I was so lucky to get a chance to meet you in person just a few weeks ago.
[3:21]So it's like such a full circle, awesome moment to see the person because when you look
[3:26]at a photo, I never, you know, you don't know, it's sort of like a book.
[3:29]You don't know necessarily much about the person and you, right.
[3:32]Anyway, so I'm so fun because, yeah, I think you had posted something to, I love these
[3:38]photographs.
[3:39]I'm not sure we didn't make them, you know, yes, but they're in my house and I live every
[3:43]day.
[3:44]And someone else wrote, well, that's Marielle Bartley and that's, and I got a, I got some kind
[3:50]of, you know, hashtag alert and that's how we connected and then to do it in real life
[3:56]was really cool.
[3:57]I mean, remember we, we met in psych harbor and I had a ton of work up.
[4:02]I had a residency at the church in psych harbor and, and you visited and you saw a lot
[4:08]all at once.
[4:09]I was overwhelmed.
[4:11]I was like in heaven.
[4:12]I feel like I could live in a room just surrounded by your, your work.
[4:16]It's truly amazing.
[4:18]And I don't and anyway, I want to put you on the spot, but, you know, I love books so much.
[4:23]Do you also love books?
[4:24]Yeah, you know, I think you're a writer and you come from such a different angle than
[4:30]I do.
[4:31]I originally started photographing books because I was searching for an object that I could
[4:37]return to again and again and kind of arrange and make a very almost abstract still
[4:43]life.
[4:44]You know, something, I love this painter, I'm Georgio Morandi and I had actually learned
[4:50]of his work through books when I was in art school many, many millions ago.
[4:54]And I always, and then he had a big show at the Met in 2008 and I had really seen a lot
[5:00]of his work all at once and I said, I need to go and find my object that I'm going to
[5:07]like maybe take a year to look at, you know, that was my plan.
[5:11]And I tried bottles and cans and things and they were just too domestic.
[5:15]They just weren't sort of general enough for me.
[5:18]And then I saw the stack of books at a friend's house and I had those remainder lines,
[5:23]you know, like with books, no one, no writers like to see those, but the strand used
[5:29]to always have like, you know, bins of books with these remainder lines.
[5:33]And anyway, just seeing a stack of books with sort of like two black lines just looked
[5:39]so intentional and sculptural and I just started photographing these paperbacks and there
[5:47]was an entire world in there and I still returned and that was like, what is that 11 years
[5:53]ago?
[5:54]So I'm still looking at this sort of like beautiful quiet abstraction that I find by
[6:02]just stacking books and arranging them slowly and looking at them with natural light on
[6:08]them.
[6:09]So that was the beginning and then it's sort of like the gift that keeps giving.
[6:14]Every time I'm always looking at books now and I just find new aspects to kind of focus
[6:19]on and I collect the pulp fiction, the very bright books you saw.
[6:26]That was from the strand.
[6:27]I had a foot surgery and I was living on 13th Street and when I could finally
[6:33]walk with my crutches, I was trained every night and find one or two, you know, really
[6:40]colorful paperbacks and the 48 cent bin and I kept them for, you know, months and months
[6:45]and then I finally started playing with them and so I have, I don't know, I have a huge
[6:50]collection now of pulp fiction books and I, you know, I kind of am always suppressing
[6:56]the content.
[6:57]That's really one of the things I do.
[7:00]There's something very can't be very interesting and other artists would go in totally
[7:04]a different direction with the same material.
[7:07]I'm very interested in intentionally suppressing the content, the narrative, the noise maybe.
[7:18]So you know, it's there, you know, you know what a book contains but I'm playing with
[7:24]that and making it a very calm, quiet composition or something that's almost impenetrable
[7:31]yet has so much visual interest and engagement that it's a different way to engage with
[7:38]a book, a book as an object.
[7:41]So interesting.
[7:42]So when you read for fun, like do you, like the books that you love, do you ever feel
[7:48]tempted from a content standpoint to do something with those, like do you have a book you
[7:52]come back to?
[7:53]I'm not to not to ask you for a specific book, but just books that you love, like would
[7:56]you ever make a stack of those or that goes against your whole theory?
[8:00]And it goes against it unless there's like sort of, you know, a poetic way to do it.
[8:06]I sort of think of my work as almost tonal palms, you know, they're sort of compositional
[8:12]and musical and more like poetry.
[8:16]So if there's, there is text that sometimes comes in, but it's very open ended.
[8:21]It's not like, I love that book and don't you love this paragraph and it's not about
[8:29]that so much.
[8:30]It's about playing with how to keep that open ended, how to maybe have that idea, but
[8:37]not spell it out.
[8:39]You know, I did this whole series at Great Gardens in East Hampton.
[8:44]I had access to the really faded damaged books that were kept since the bills lived there
[8:53]and the house was going to be sold, my God in there.
[8:57]And there, the titles, they over, they kind of underscored or hinted at the entire kind
[9:06]of fable of the bills.
[9:10]So I included the titles.
[9:12]I kept them very simple.
[9:13]I didn't go into the campy aspect that would have been too easy and it's really not
[9:19]where I'm coming from.
[9:21]This was much more subtle and poignant.
[9:24]There were titles like, you know, this bright summer on a book that was ruined and faded
[9:31]and almost like sterile, you know, there was another title that was humorous but kind
[9:38]of sad, released from nervous tension, you know.
[9:42]So it was a portrait of their library and that brings me to, you know, just to explain
[9:50]a little bit that I do two very different approaches when I do these books.
[9:56]One is I collect books because of some shape.
[10:00]that I find really interesting about them,
[10:03]like the white colors or the top stain
[10:07]of a hardcover book that happens to be
[10:11]in all sorts of interesting colors,
[10:12]or maybe it's the, what's it?
[10:15]And papers?
[10:16]And papers, thank you, I did a whole series of that.
[10:19]So, you know, I find all these different traits,
[10:21]but the other thing I do is I go to libraries,
[10:25]specific libraries and find my way.
[10:28]Like I say, what is it about?
[10:30]Like how do I represent this library?
[10:33]Now what's my way in?
[10:35]You know, so I have to sort of be there
[10:38]and be in the place and kind of come up with a strategy
[10:43]to photograph it and to show it
[10:46]and to make a project out of it.
[10:48]So I've done a number of artists libraries,
[10:51]which I find super interesting
[10:52]because it's more of a visual, well often,
[10:55]you know, visual artists.
[10:56]So it's sort of like how do visual artists,
[10:59]what do they have, what are your Jackson Pollocks books
[11:02]and how might they abuse them?
[11:03]But I don't want to spell it out like a historian might
[11:06]or make very definite, you know, kind of conclusions.
[11:11]I want to keep it very much open
[11:15]and very much suggestive and very much about,
[11:18]wow, here's this book that these artists held
[11:22]and referred to and there was part of their light,
[11:26]you know, so there's all those things
[11:28]that when I'm in a specific library come into play
[11:33]and it's, it's a very different approach.
[11:36]It's almost like doing an assignment, you know,
[11:39]like an editorial assignment as opposed
[11:41]to just an abstract in my studio composition.
[11:45]So those two things feed each other nicely.
[11:48]So what would you do here?
[11:50]Can you see the look behind me?
[11:51]Well, you have a lot of color coded books books.
[11:55]Oh, they go all the way around.
[11:56]I think I would make some big stacks of color, you know.
[12:02]We may have to do that at some point.
[12:04]I feel like that would be so fun.
[12:07]What have you learned about the people
[12:09]who collect your work or who buy your photos?
[12:12]Do you know anything about them or have you met them?
[12:15]Tell me about that.
[12:16]Yeah, that's so interesting because you,
[12:18]as an artist, you make all this work
[12:20]and it goes out into the world
[12:22]and I don't know much about it.
[12:24]I mean, unless it's an institution
[12:26]or a foundation where they then show the work, you know,
[12:29]and I have some connection to them.
[12:32]It's just out there and someone's, you know,
[12:34]living room, bathroom, what else?
[12:38]But just recently, actually,
[12:40]but I try to make books of my book projects.
[12:45]Yeah.
[12:45]I love this idea of like a book of books.
[12:47]Yes.
[12:48]Ultimately, I would love to do that with every project.
[12:51]But as you know, making a book takes a lot more,
[12:56]or just as much time as making the pictures.
[12:58]So I would need like another year
[12:59]inside of every series because I seem to jump from one
[13:04]to the next, like someone says,
[13:05]oh, you did Jackson Pollock now, you should go
[13:09]and do Picasso, you know, there's all these connections
[13:12]and that I'm always following.
[13:14]And I would like to take the time to
[13:17]or maybe collaborate with, you know, some bookmakers.
[13:21]I've done it.
[13:22]I think I have three now.
[13:24]And one just was acquired by Moma.
[13:27]Oh, wow.
[13:28]That's amazing.
[13:29]That's where they found it.
[13:30]Where Instagram?
[13:32]Oh, is that possible?
[13:35]It's a crazy world that we make these
[13:38]really interesting connections, right?
[13:40]Yes.
[13:41]You know, all about the power of it.
[13:42]I'm much more of a dabbler, you know,
[13:45]I'm not doing it every day, but it's really interesting
[13:49]you know, my work can find its way into interesting places.
[13:54]It's really just, you know, it's just,
[13:56]I'm really grateful for it.
[13:58]And it's really just a wonderful thing.
[14:01]Amazing.
[14:02]You should do one book with all your series,
[14:03]you know, like a retrospective type.
[14:06]Yeah.
[14:07]Not everything, but like a little bit from each one.
[14:09]Yeah, that could be interesting, right?
[14:11]Sort of seeing how they connect
[14:12]and how one thing leads to another.
[14:14]Yeah.
[14:15]It sounds like a good book, yeah.
[14:17]I would buy that.
[14:19]Oh, would you publish it?
[14:22]I love the hardest thing for artists.
[14:24]No, I know.
[14:25]Actually, I've been approached by a number of like photographers
[14:28]or, you know, we just don't do that type.
[14:31]We only do a couple of books at Zevie books,
[14:32]but I could certainly help you.
[14:34]I could try to help you find Zevie.
[14:35]Let's do it.
[14:36]I just spoke to you three times, Zevie.
[14:39]I know, I know.
[14:40]We'd like a sideline photography this.
[14:41]I love photography though.
[14:42]So it would be a joy, but I did just meet this book
[14:45]back at your the other day, who says he could, you know,
[14:48]he makes, he does all the design and makes it.
[14:50]I just don't know who then, then I guess you just sell it to,
[14:54]you know what, like, one of the big tashing or.
[14:56]Well, honestly, there's most photographers pay
[15:00]for their own books.
[15:03]And then, you know, they're distributed by, you know,
[15:06]Daphne places and hopefully they make the money back.
[15:09]But that's kind of the state of art publishing now,
[15:13]but unless you're an established, you know,
[15:15]there's a crossover, there's some larger market.
[15:18]But yeah.
[15:20]So that's another reason for, like, a little just right in there.
[15:27]The thing about your work though is that even though it is
[15:29]great on Instagram, and I think it's particularly great
[15:32]versus other photographers, perhaps, because it's so
[15:36]like visually arresting, like each image,
[15:38]even on a small scale, is trans blades very well.
[15:42]I don't know if that wasn't the right word.
[15:43]But, but when I was there and could see all the photos
[15:48]in person, like, there is nothing like that.
[15:50]They're, so, there's something with the texture
[15:54]and seeing them up close that makes you stop in your tracks,
[15:58]which is hard to convey on a small scale button.
[16:01]Yeah.
[16:02]And for me, like this idea, my photographs don't really look
[16:04]like photographs off, and people are like,
[16:06]oh, I like your paintings or, like,
[16:07]you know, airplanes and I kind of work
[16:11]until I get some kind of transformation, you know,
[16:14]somehow the print sings and it looks, you know,
[16:18]it looks like the right kind of print for the project
[16:22]I'm doing, and it does look sort of non-photographic
[16:25]in a way, because, yeah, I'm trying,
[16:27]I'm trying to push it in that in different directions.
[16:31]And do you sell?
[16:34]So if people want to research and buy your prints,
[16:38]like the actual ones that you, you know,
[16:40]make yourself and all that,
[16:42]they can go to your website, right?
[16:43]Mariel and Bartley.com.
[16:45]You know, that will, I mean, I don't sell directly at all.
[16:48]I sell through my galleries,
[16:50]and there's gallery information there,
[16:52]and I have a show coming up very soon.
[16:55]May 21st is opening the drawing room in East Hampton.
[16:59]Oh, that's why I was talking about the drawing room
[17:01]in East Hampton.
[17:02]I knew there was something that had to do with that.
[17:02]Yeah, yeah.
[17:04]And then I'll be like their first summer show.
[17:06]And what about people who just love what you're doing,
[17:09]but maybe they can't afford a whole print?
[17:12]Is there any way to get, you know,
[17:14]do you make like posters or anything?
[17:16]No, no, I don't.
[17:18]I haven't, you know, maybe book a book would be good,
[17:21]but I have, yeah.
[17:22]No, I'm just doing the prints now,
[17:24]and, you know, there are a lot more affordable
[17:27]than paintings, that's true.
[17:30]That's true.
[17:31]Well, I really just wanted you to come on
[17:34]so that people would go check you out,
[17:37]follow you on Instagram at Mary Ellen Bartley, right?
[17:40]Is that right?
[17:41]Yeah, what is it?
[17:41]Mary Ellen underscore Bartley.
[17:43]Mary Ellen underscore Bartley.
[17:45]And if anyone is going to be out in the Hamptons,
[17:49]between, when does it close?
[17:50]May 21st until when?
[17:52]May 21st to June 20th, June 20th.
[17:55]So if you're out in the Hamptons,
[17:57]or you feel like making a road trip
[17:59]and checking out her work in person,
[18:01]you should go to the drawing room in East Hampton
[18:03]during that time, and you'll see what I mean
[18:05]about how beautiful they are.
[18:06]And if nothing else, you'll get a chance to admire books
[18:10]in a whole new way.
[18:11]And follow another artist who is equally obsessed
[18:14]by books in a different way.
[18:17]Anything I'm forgetting that you'd like people to do?
[18:19]I do have work up at Yancey with the Y.
[18:23]Yancey Richardson Gallery in Chelsea.
[18:26]There's some work up on the wall there now.
[18:28]And they usually have some work of mine,
[18:30]you know, in the gallery to see.
[18:32]So that's another way to see it in person.
[18:35]Yancey Richardson is a great gallery anyway.
[18:37]So there's always lots of cool stuff there.
[18:39]So that's another fun.
[18:41]Yeah, less of a track if you live in the city
[18:44]than going to the Hamptons, but yeah, that's true.
[18:48]All right, well, thank you.
[18:49]Thank you for just chatting with me more about your work.
[18:52]I hope that listeners find your work as amazing as I do.
[18:56]DM me if you're listening at Zebio on Instagram
[18:59]just tell me if you also adore these photos
[19:02]because I really do.
[19:04]Anyway, thank you, Mary Ellen.
[19:05]Thanks, Zebio.
[19:07]See you on the Instagram soon.
[19:10]See you on Instagram soon.
[19:12]Thank you.
[19:14]Hi, I'm Zebio and you're listening
[19:16]to the award-winning podcast.
[19:17]Moms don't have time to read books.
[19:19]If you like this podcast, you will love my new anthology
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[19:25]Check it out and you'll hear from 49 authors
[19:28]about all sorts of things Moms don't have time to do.
[19:30]All the authors have been on this podcast.
[19:32]Also, check out my TikTok at with Zebio and Tracy.
[19:35]My other podcast, Sex Talk with Zebio and Tracy.
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[19:41]And of course, my new publishing company called Zebio Books.
[19:44]And now back to our daily author interview site
[19:47]and a quick hello from some of my kids.
[19:49]Hi, hi, hello.
[19:51]Enjoy the show.