Artist Barry Stone opens photographic digital files in a programmer's debugging software, rearranging the image code to create a new iteration of the image. The code lies wait just as its counterpart, the latent image, lies dormantly on exposed film until it is activated by the chemical development. The newly arranged pixels are then translated into ink droplets on paper, reassembled from individual sheets to reconstitute the new image. The front of the image displays the pixel image of the cloud and the code from the image is printed on the back in the shape of the cloud.

Barry’s pictures of clouds were originally inspired by photographs made by Alfred Steiglitz in the 1920’s he called “Equivalents.” Steiglitz wanted to create photographs that could “hold a moment, …so completely, that all who see [the picture of it] will relive an equivalent of what has been expressed." Steiglitz was also famous for championing a ‘straight’ modernist style which eschewed the soft-focus hazy scenes depicted by pictorialist photographs, a camp he began his career in.

This cloud photograph was taken with an old film camera akin to the one Barry’s great-grandfather used. The film was developed with a homemade developer made primarily from mint tea. The developer, less toxic than traditional developers, renders the image in a heavy grain. The image, as with all images, is then scanned. The grain is retranslated into light again, then into symbols, and finally into pixels. Clouds being ephemeral structures are formed of vapor by countless interactions animated by our own imaginations and experiences. In a similar spirit, each photograph Barry makes using this process contains multitudes and offers endless streams of possibilities.


Barry Stone is an artist, musician, and Professor of Photography at Texas State University. His artworks are represented by Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in New York and was the founding member of the artist collective, Lakes Were Rivers and the conductor of the image and sound project, Porch Swing Orchestra. His work has been nationally and internationally exhibited most recently at Pinakothek der-Moderne in Munich, The Center for Art and Media, (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany, The Lianzhou Photography Festival in China, and with Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in New York City. His photographs have been acquired by many collections including the Cleveland Clinic, Fidelity Mutual Corporation Collection, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. His work has been reviewed in many publications including Artforum, Artlies, Artnet, Washington City Paper, The New York Sun, TimeOut New York and the New York Times.

www.barrystone.com