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6 rue Jacob, 75006, Paris, France
Open: Tue-Sat 11am-7pm
Artist: Tina Barney
Zander Galerie Paris presents an exhibition dedicated to Tina Barney’s early black-and-white photographs. Rediscovered by the artist while revisiting her archives during the pandemic, these rarely seen works offer an intimate portrait of American East Coast society in the late 1970s.
Born in 1945, Tina Barney is renowned for her large-scale colour photographs exploring family dynamics and the rituals of privilege. The six works on view belong to an earlier chapter of her practice. Made during summers spent in Rhode Island, they reveal a more spontaneous approach that the artist has described as “loose sketches a painter might use to plan for a larger painting.”
Working with a 35 mm camera and drawing inspiration from Lee Friedlander and Garry Winogrand, whom she has called “masters of the unaltered photograph,” Barney embraced the immediacy of the snapshot. Black and white allowed her to concentrate on the material qualities of the image, bringing fabrics, hair, glass and atmospheric effects into sharp focus.
Faces often remain outside the frame, directing attention instead to gestures, clothing and posture. Suits, white dresses and carefully arranged hairstyles become markers of belonging and social identity. Already present in these early photographs are the themes that have defined Barney’s oeuvre for decades: the codes that govern human relationships and the subtle structures underlying family life.
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