Steidlville

Last remaining first edition stock.

For almost thirty years Tina Barney has constructed a critique of patrician otherness in photographs made in rambling New England beach houses and New York apartments... Now, in her series The Europeans, we're off on a twenty-first century version of the Grand Tour... From Austria (1996) and Italy (1996-1998) to England (2001), France (2002), Spain (2003), and Germany (2004)… Barney has confirmed a New World fantasy: that (even if your vantage point starts out high) the Old World rich live differently from you and me. Merry Foresta

Tina Barney’s photographs portray relationships and at the same time invoke theatrical role-play reminiscent of nineteenth century portraiture. Each is a staged re-enactment of a prior moment and their power rests on their emphasis on often quixotic and ultimately human and mundane details. These photographic moments undermine the traditional relationship of subject to viewer and elide the status of portraits of the classes who would traditionally have commissioned painted family portraits.