The British photographer Kate Barry, the daughter of Jane Birkin, passed away prematurely, aged 46, in December 2013, leaving behind a photographic oeuvre of striking quality, yet little known to the general public. In addition to celebrity and fashion portraits, which were the core of her professional activity and helped her gain recognition, she was discreetly developing a personal body of work full of delicateness and fragility, made up essentially of landscapes, which she contemplated in seclusion, silence, and solitude. She wanted to “get away from faces.” Kate Barry went on to explain: “I felt I was usurping others’ emotions, I was out of place. I wanted to do something completely different to see what else I had in me. The reverse of portrait. To see where I was without others. Places of desertion, places of memory. Like when you’re little and lie on your back, and let go: no more talk, only places. I refuse to believe that there is nothing more to objects. I like the dialog between objects and structures.” From this practice survived prints made under her supervision, cut-up contact sheets, minimalist works in color. Diane Dufour and Fannie Escoulen, from BAL in Paris, bring to our attention this mysterious aspect of Kate Barry’s work in an exhibition in Arles and an accompanying book published by Xavier Barral. In between we discover writings, fragments, letters, as well as clips of films made during her trip to Savannah in 2007 with Jean Rolin on the traces of Flannery O’Connor, a writer she admired. These are all clues to understanding this unfinished oeuvre. The book contains one of Kate Barry’s most beautiful statements, which today may be applied to her thoughtful images: “These aren’t walls, but a façade. It’s like skin. The façade bears a trace, I know not of what, it’s instinctive. I am drawn towards a point common to all these elements: large, massive witnesses; structures that stand more or less erect, round-edged silos. But I don’t think about any of this when I do stuff: I don’t think at all. In a split second, you just go blank. To be honest, my photos have no pretensions. I am not nostalgic. They are like my giant trees, except lifeless, with no spring. Stones live a different life.”
Kate Barry
The Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles Festival 2017
July 3 to September 24, 2017
Arles, France
