Potato Poems by Barbara Weissberger

Issue 182

These photographic quilts sit somewhere in a three-way intersection between photography, collage, and sculpture. Each piece in this series is its own idiosyncratic shape. I began as a sculptor and for as long as I have been making photographs I have thought in terms of print-as-object. Fabric realizes this beautifully: photograph as material. I see each quilt as a body of sorts, with an irregular contour suggesting movement and change. To make the quilts, my staged photographs are printed on poly poplin, or translated into woven tapestry, I then cut and sew them together with fragments of jeans, bras, and other materials. The intimacy of the photographs of the earthy potato, its skin, its eyes, is matched with the intimacy of the quilt, a blanket to warm and touch a body.

Barbara Weissberger (she/her) divides her time between Pittsburgh, PA, Basin, Montana, and New York, NY.
barbaraweissberger.net | @barbaraweissberger