TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

Martine Barrat gave a lecture at the International Center of Photography on March 30, 1994 showed slides of her project entitled "Do or Die” documenting her odyssey in photographing young boxers inHarlem, the South Bronx and Brooklyn.Her lecture was intelligent and engaging, and she arranged for two young people to gave a recitation related to the material. As well as being informative, the evening was entertaining, and we were very pleased that we were able to have her as part of our lecture series. It is our hope that some time in the future, we will be able to host Ms. Barrat as a lecturer of other work that she has done.

MARTINE AND THE BOXERS

Into the dungeons, in the dark, where escape is choreographed in the flashing explosion of muscle circumscribed by rope, or in the grave dignity of massive bodies at rest, where sweat is the usual currency and warriors pose with assembly-line trophies- Martine enters with her camera eye. Transfixed by the smallest boxers, the children, she photographs them repeatedly, as little vulnerable men with large padded fists. Some toughen into powerful gladiators, and she shows them grown up, serene in their coiled strength. Others she depicts as so small and awkward it seems certain they will emerge from their years of combat still at least a little bit childlike and sweet. In these rooms of channelled violence a culture emerges, apparently more refined in its rituals and focused in its desire than the alternative lives of poverty and chaos available in nearby New York streets. The combatants, who are too small, or too poor, or too rough, or too brown or black or perhaps just too self contained for the usual media spotlight, are met by this photographer in a warm and continuing embrace. Over and over again she has gone back to photograph until we, witnesses to the exchange, share with her these boxers and their sport. Knowing Martine, her intensity and obsession, it is clear that she too, in her way, like the boxers, is a fighter. One who photographs. Whose victories are in these pictures.

Fred Ritchin

November 1984