About Barbara DuMetz

Barbara DuMetz is a Pioneer. When she began working as a commercial photographer in the 1970’s, very few women had established and maintained successful careers in the field, especially African American women. Known for her work with African -American Celebrities, corporations and images of everyday life in African –American communities, DuMetz’s photographs make an important contribution to raising the visibility of a people who had been largely unseen and misunderstood by the American mainstream. Her photographs also contributed greatly to diversifying the landscape of images that defined pop culture in the United States.

DuMetz has been a professional photographer for more than four decades now. Over the course of her brilliant career, she has produced award-winning images for publications like Essence and Black Enterprise Magazine’s as well as for corporations like the Coca –Cola Company, Delta Airlines Inc. and the MacDonald’s Corporation, among many others. Along the way, DuMetz also established herself as an outstanding portrait and fine art photographer. DuMetz began her career in Los Angeles, California in the early 1970’s after Graduating from Fisk University. She attended Art Center College of Design now Located in Pasadena, California, where she learned the art and business of making great images: She currently splits her time between Los Angeles, Ca. and Atlanta, Ga. where she continues to create new images to add to her archives, as well as edit images’ from her large body of work to curate into exhibitions on various concepts and themes. 

As a photographer working with art directors, graphic designers and other art buyers commissioning for my style of photography, my main concern and what I keep foremost in mind is bringing my creative interpretation to the assignment. When collaborating with another’s concept of what the final visual outcome is to be, my creative process is to complete as much preparation and research about the subject matter as possible. This allows me to visualize and gather the elements, which will be needed to create the final look to the photograph. 

The challenge is to marry two visual concepts and blend them seamlessly into one image. In the final analysis my image is not only for me and the Art Director but for the larger audience who will be reading and viewing the magazine, brochure, advertising campaign or any other visual medium for which the assignment is being created. When that goal is met, it is a joyous moment for me and I am all smiles.

With my personal work, the images that I create are born out of my need to manifest visual interpretations of human experiences centered around emotions such as love, happiness, joy, friendship and laughter, as well as feelings of beauty, sensuality and serenity. I am inspired by listening to good music (Jazz, most often), my vivid imagination, and an insatiable curiosity and inquisitiveness about life and spirituality.

With my abstract images, my objective is to capture in a photograph how I see the oblivious abstractions in reality. I am naturally drawn to and aware of the details in life that exist all around us, so you could say, I photograph the details.  Sometimes the abstract image is created from an unintended photograph taken randomly or from one taken on purpose, and then the final outcome is recreated later using the digital process as well as other creative methods.