Colors more dazzling than a painter’s palette, striking contrasts, a bunch of objects in the background… In her work, the photographer Tina Barney is not the type to play the minimalism card. Of the loaded shots – of humans, of furniture, of senses – which have become the unique touch of an equally singular artist. Known for his large format portraits and his appetite for related themes to the familyto transmission and traditions and rituals, the American has left her mark on the world of photography with an unparalleled style and approach to this art. Camera in hand, she is the one who dared enter homes of dozens of households to freeze the family stories and their complexity on glossy paper. Since September 28 and until January 19, 2025Tina Barney is in the spotlight at Palm Game as part of the exhibition Family Ties (“Family Ties”).
Family Commission with Snake (close-up)2007, © 2024, Tina Barney. Courtesy of the artist and Kasmin, New York
A quasi-immersive exhibition
In a living room, a bathroomcooking at breakfast time, at a wedding, a Christmas celebrationa family celebration, also during times of mourning, Tina Barney invites anyone who observes her photos to join the moment and the personalities highlighted. Between the end of the 1970s when she photographed his own family in New York or New England, and the 1980s and 1990s where it opened up to a wider world than wealthy environments from the American east coast, Tina Barney enters the depths of intimacy families, particularly from the aristocracy and the European upper bourgeoisie.
Jill and Polly in the Bathroom, 1987 © 2024, Tina Barney. Courtesy of the artist and Kasmin, New York
Sometimes taken on the spotsometimes staged, his photographs reflect a mixture between rigor and improvisation. « No doubt people think [que je consacre mon travail] to high society or the rich, which annoys me. […] These photographs deal with familypeople from the same family who usually live alongside each other in their own home. […] I don’t know if the public realizes that this is my family. », she confided to BOMB Magazine in 1995. From one year to the next, Tina Barney rephotographs the same families, the same events. Rituals and traditions have a central place in his work, allowing us to evoke and capture the idea of transmission from generation to generation.
From the representation of families to that of single models
Evolving with the same timeline than that which has taken place in the work of the photographer over the years, the exhibition gradually brings its visitors towards this desire, at the end of the 1990s, to “ put fewer people In [ses] images “. Of photos where entire generations blend together on all levels of a single shot, the photographer leaves more room to closer portraits and still so colorful.
Julianne Moore and Family, 1999, © 2024, Tina Barney. Courtesy of the artist and Kasmin, New York
A criterion does not change, however, one of those that she will never leave to chance throughout her career: precision of his images. From the 1980s, she used a 20 x 25 cm photographic camera on a tripod and favored the format 120 x 150 cm for his photos. This sharpness and this sense of detail which mark the mind at the first vision of Barney’s work continue to fuel most recent of his photos, captured between 2015 and 2019. The reason is simple: “ I want it to be possible to approach the image. I want each object to be as clear and precise as possible so that the viewer can actually examine it and have the feeling of entering the room. » Through her photos, Tina Barney wanted open the doors of the different homes photographed to those who would look at them, but also to allow “ question yourself or on the story of his life “. The bet was completely successful.
The Limo, 2006 © 2024, Tina Barney. Courtesy of the artist and Kasmin, New York
Tina Barney, Family Ties
Palm Game
1, place de la Concorde – 1st
Until January 19, 2025
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