Tina Barney: From the Dutch masters to digital photography

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With an impressive career in photography that began in the 1970s, Tina Barney has become known for lavish, tableaux-like depictions of the American and European upper crust - though that’s certainly not what she would have you take away from her work. In Tina Barney: Four Decades, currently on view at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, the true breadth and beauty of her work is on full, vibrant display. The retrospective - Barney’s first show with Kasmin - brings into focus a honed talent for intricate composition and a keen eye for capturing the human subject with honesty and, at times, quiet vulnerability. The artist took H A P P E N I N G on a tour of the show in Chelsea and talked about what drives her work, going digital, and what’s happening next.

What was it about these specific works that made you pick them for this retrospective show? Was it a collaborative effort with Paul Kasmin and the gallery’s directors?

Yes. And that part was really fun, all of us together. And also having a new kind of vision from them. They’re coming at it from not looking at these pictures for so long. I think it was not about subject matter at all, but just, formally, what went well together.

 

Has art history - specifically the history of portrait painting - influenced your work over the years?

In the beginning, very much so. I was interested by Dutch 17th century painting. I wasn’t going out and saying, “I want something to look like Dutch 17th century, ” but I saw all these devices the Dutch use. Vermeer, Ostade, de Hooch…

The reason I started reading about them and looking at them was because I was frustrated by the flat piece of paper that a photograph is made on. And I just thought, “Oh, I’ve gotta create space somehow.” And painters and sculptors are always talking about that too.
 

 

Many of your portraits seem to capture moments somewhere between formal, staged settings and a candidness that comes from the subjects themselves. Is that a balance you look for?

Well you have to take into consideration that, with the interior shots, there’s an hour of set up with lights, umbrellas, power packs… So when people ask me if they’re impromptu, they’re really not understanding the process. And that makes capturing the moment even more of a miracle. And then you've got all the technical stuff that can go wrong. The chance of getting someone in focus is sort of a craps shoot. That’s why there’s always the frustration of something looking a little stiff. There’s only so much I can do. And if they’re not stiff, they’re probably going to be out of focus. Sometimes that doesn’t matter, and sometimes it does.

 

HAPPENING
Tina Barney Mr. and Mrs. Leo Castelli (1998) /  Tina Barney Mark, Amy and Tara (1983)
 

 

You’ve begun working with a digital camera. Has that been a major transition for you?

It’s kind of like saying, “I want to learn to speak Greek or Russian.” For me it’s really hard. There’s so much to learn. I think there’s a lot of technicalities to using a view camera, but in a way there’s much less. It’s a much more simplified machine. There’s a lot of trial and error and digital cameras are small and light. Even though I use a tripod and lights, that part is much nicer - the flexibility of it. And also there’s a very interesting translation in what the camera and the film are doing that’s different. It’s like changing from oil to watercolor. And that part is very exciting. Then thinking up new subject matter, which is the most difficult part of all.
 

 

The so called ‘one percent’ has become such a popular and divisive topic in the past several years. And in your photographs we see many moments in the lives of the social elite chronicled. What about this world, if anything, fascinates you?

It doesn’t fascinate me; it was just what I came from. And so I never thought of the subject matter, really. What I was interested in was family. The class I was photographing was not in the back of my mind. The critics are the ones who started talking about that, putting that in the forefront. What I was fascinated by was the upkeep of tradition and ritual, the upkeep of this lifestyle - and pointing out what was beautiful about it. So there’s a combination of appreciation, and maybe awe, sort of saying, ‘This might be gone. Pay attention.’
 

 

And what have you been working on recently? Could a show of new photographs be on the horizon?

Well I’ve been photographing sports. And I don’t know why I thought of that, but I had to start somewhere. I made one or two pictures that I liked, and that sort of spurs me on to continue. I don’t know if it’s going to work. It’s harder to find than anybody could possibly imagine. And getting access and permission has become very difficult. That’s one of the reasons I keep photographing the same people I know over and over again. Knowing them made it easy. But I’m trying [this new subject matter]. I’ve been working on it for a year now. We’ll see what happens.

 



Tina Barney: Four Decades is on view at Paul Kasmin Gallery at 293 10th Avenue in New York through June 20.
 
All images (c) Tina Barney, Courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery