Downtown All Star Team, obscured.
Tim Barber
On Friday OHWOW Book Club hosted a party to mark the release of the book Untitled Photographs by Tim Barber. Tim is a great photo-maker and Untitled Photographs contains some real gems. The work spans a period of 15 years, and though not connected by any specific theme or content, all of the images hang together very nicely and form a beautiful, unique, and complicated whole.
The book contains a great essay by Jesse Pearson from which I will quote "...these two last things that are important to remember about Tim, the person, as you look at his photographs: He is funny and also he is attuned to pathos. On a gut level, he understands the comedy-tragedy connection...Please therefore try to feel in Tim's photos the marriage of 'this is funny' and 'the world is sad.' Both are there."
In addition to his personal work, Tim runs the amazing online gallery Tiny Vices, curates shows and exhibitions, throws awesome parties, and shoots commercial work that you may very well have somewhere in your house right now.
Tim is also a real nice guy and his encouragement played no small part in the creation of this very blog. Late last summer I was shooting a show/party that Tim helped to organize and he asked to use some of the photos on Tiny Vices. I was honored and flattered and it really sparked me to go out and shoot more and more. A few weeks later I stopped by to shoot the opening of a group show Tim had curated. Through him some of my pictures ended up being used by the New York Times in what will no doubt be the apex of my brief ‘photography’ ‘career’ if it can even be called such.
Point is that I barely know him and yet I owe him a lot. You owe it to your eyes to buy his book.