ACQUA #5 examines the notion of limits in the representation of water. The limit as a surface, both impenetrable and moving as in the work of Debra Bloomfield or water performing the limiting function of a second skin, as depicted by Joel Meyerovitz. Water is seen as agitated to its limits in the work of Trent Parke, and at the limits of the earth in the nebulous sky of Facundo de Zuviria.
— Condoviti, Armani Live
Moving from the east coast hubbub that is centered on Miami Beach this week, the Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco is focused on the calming aura of Debra Bloomfield: Wilderness.
— Artnet on Wilderness
"A series of recent works by Bay Area photographer Debra Bloomfield probes the look and meaning of wilderness in an age when, as ecological controversialist Timothy Morton puts it, “there is no 'away’” anymore, once we recognize the biosphere as a finite, integral whole."
— Kenneth Baker, SF Chronicle
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"Water fades into sky as quiet waves, lit seemingly sublimely, produce an encompassing calm in one poetic work. In another image, a thicket of forest trees suggests a pastel wonderland. Other images feature snow-dusted evergreens and mountain peaks, the latter forming a striking jagged skyline."
— Anita Katz, SF Examiner
"I come from the generation who knew Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham," Bloomfield told The Park Record during a telephone interview from her home in Oakland. "I studied with them and had dinners with them. So I have this purist belief with my abilities to respond, think, hear and see, that I have the ability to capture a scene at that right moment through a camera."
— Debra Bloomfield in Interview with Scott Iwasaki, The Park Record
"ACQUA #5 examines the notion of limits in the representation of water. The limit as a surface, both impenetrable and moving as in the work of Debra Bloomfield"....
— Armani Live
“I think what you have in the room is very representative of the richness and the diversity of the medium, because you have different formats and different ways of playing with [photography],”
— Julien Frydman, director of Paris Photo
"The theme of water is an element always present in the work of Giorgio Armani. Since 2009 it has also become a social commitment for the designer, who started charity campaign “Water for LifeTM” in order to provide drinking water to
communities in need...."
— Proprietexclusive Review of Giorgio Armani Acqua #5
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"The first time I saw prints from Debra Bloomfield’s Wilderness project, I knew they were different. The images I saw, maybe half a dozen, took up residence within me. I questioned myself later—how was it that such minimal images could convey so much, could speak so loudly, and could captivate me so fully?
....In my initial meeting with her, Bloomfield mentioned that she was making audio recordings as part of her project. At that time, I could conceive how these sounds might support the photographs, relate to the visual information, and yet parallel the minimalism of the images. The audio track, included here on a CD, is a first for Bloomfield and something she considers a collaboration between her and her son, musician Jake Bloomfield-Misrach. Together they took her five years’ worth of digital recordings, which the artist had painstakingly captured, reviewed, identified, and edited, to create what Bloomfield refers to as a soundscape. Although this is her first photographic project to feature an audio component, her concern for sound has long been present. Bloomfield recounts: “As early as the Four Corners work I have been aware that I am influenced by the sounds I hear while photographing. With Wilderness, it seemed imperative to me that this work include sound.”
...."With Wilderness, Bloomfield has created elegant and minimal photographs which, combined with an evocative soundscape, offer an intimate and powerful experience of wilderness. For many, it may be the closest we get to a personal experience of a real wilderness place. How lucky we are to have had such a sensitive, passionate, and capable emissary working on our behalf."
— Rebecca A. Senf, Norton Family Curator of Photography
Center for Creative Photography (joint appointment Phoenix Art Museum)Curator of Photography at The Center of
“Debra Bloomfield is creating a body of work for our eyes and ears that beckons us to experience our own wild hearts beating in harmony with the heart of the Tongass National Forest, now threatened. We, too, are threatened by our own insulated nature. What are we creating through the wealth of our own disengagement with all things wild?”
—Terry Tempest Williams, Environmental Author, Utah
“Everyone will feel a connection to the natural environment through the visually poetic photographs that Debra Bloomfield has created. Quiet, contemplative, and evocative, these images allow us to experience the emotional impact of true wilderness.”
—Deborah Klochko, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego
“Redolent with the acute sensations of being alone in the wilderness, these breathtaking images remind us that there is still a place for us in the natural world, if only we are willing to surrender our insistence on mastery to become as ordinary and integral as a blade of grass.”
—Katherine Ware, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe
"The ocean mesmerizes because it is so utterly impossible to tame; it scoffs at mankind’s pitiful efforts to impose boundaries and property lines on its vast and fluid expanse. In this series, Bloomfield has nonetheless taken possession of a little piece of the sea, staking her claim through a fixed and very personal point of view. Returning year after year to the same spot, Bloomfield uses the camera’s frame to marry sea and sky in compositions at once descriptive and evocative. Her practice is like the sea itself, balancing repetition and constancy with the magnificent unpredictability that only nature can supply. Working from sundown to sunrise, Bloomfield records the fury of a summer squall or the moonlight as it slips across the waves; the eerily beautiful colors the result of the lengthy exposures these low-lit scenes require. Her pictures remain resolutely photographic while at the same time evoking more painterly qualities: the terrible beauty of Turner’s sublime and Rothko’s contemplative color fields. In so doing, she approaches the aesthetic condition Minor White termed “spirit,” an intertwining of photographic authenticity and purely subjective experience."
—Corey Keller - Curator of Photography, San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art, 2007
“In Debra Bloomfield’s southwestern landscape photographs, color and light glow with a luminosity reminiscent of a Rothko painting. Her images, which transcend the visible, reflect the eternal spirit and energy found in these sacred places.”
—Judith Golden - Artist, photographer, and Professor Emerita from the University of Arizona in Tucson
“Debra Bloomfield’s Four Corners photographs capture the unique intersection of earth and sky and Spanish and Native American cultures that exists in the American Southwest. In these soulful works, nature and humanity seem to be of one piece, or perhaps more accurately, of one dream. Simultaneously harsh and serene, Bloomfield’s images of mesas and saints are imbued with a powerful spirituality that, as anyone who has been to this remarkable region can attest, is as real as it is compelling.”
—Lawrence Rinder - Curator of Contemporary Art, Whitney Museum of American Art
“Bloomfield captures the timeless quintessence of life and universality of place. Her color interpretations are both literal and poetic not unlike the inventive spirit within the art of Georgia O’Keeffe.”
—Steve Yates - Senior Fulbright Scholar and Curator of Photography, Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe