impermanence, 2024
Impermanence is Barbara Cole’s black-and-white meditation on becoming—an in-between world where reality and dream blur and the self is never fixed. Shot underwater with a 1950s camera and traditional film, anonymous, sheer figures appear and dissolve like passing thoughts, offering release from the noise of daily life.
By leaving the film edges intact, Cole turns each image into a tactile “window” into another realm. The photographs keep shifting as you look—revealing new secrets, new angles, and a quiet longing for what was and what might be—where a person’s essence is always in flux.
Born in Toronto in 1953, Cole works across multiple photographic mediums, including underwater photography and modernized wet collodion. Known for ethereal imagery depicting figures in states of weightlessness and transformation, she continues to push boundaries, blending traditional techniques with inventive approaches in her quest for timelessness.
Cole’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo and Washington, D.C., and is featured in international corporate collections. She was the subject of an episode in the documentary series Snapshot: The Art of Photography II and published her book Between Worlds with teNeues in 2023.
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All photographs available for purchase at multiple sizes. Please inquire for sizing and pricing.
