BRENT EDWARDS

23 January 2014

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing with the greatest pleasure in support of Martine Barrat's exhibition project at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum in Berlin. Barrat is an extraordinarily talented photographer and videographer with a large body of work in locations as varied as France Brazil, Japan, Cuba, Jamaica, and the Congo. But for a number of decades now her main commitment as an artist has been to the documentation of everyday life in black communities in New York City. The Martin-Gropius-Bau exhibition will be the first showing of the full range of her work in Harlem since the 1970s, and as such it promises to be a major occasion. I met Barrat a few years ago in the context of my current research, on the “loft jazz” scene in downtown Manhattan in the 1970’s, and I have had the chance to see some of her Harlem work, which I would describe as unparalleled due not only to her talent as an artist, but also to her unwavering devotion over such an extended period to the neighborhood that is often described as the "Mecca of African America." As a photographer Barrat has a rare capacity to draw our attention to the creativity, dignity, and resiliency of her subjects in the face of conditions that many would simply deplore or dismiss as predicaments of poverty or abjection. Her work demonstrates that those qualities in African American life are both a mode of resistance to deprivation, as well as a constant and conscious commitment to shared pleasure, to deep reservoirs of communal tradition and ritual, as well as to a range of unpredictable modes of social life that defy categorization and stereotype. She achieves this without polemic and without sentimentality. Barrat's art is characterized by the remarkable warmth and humility of her gaze and by her unique eye for beauty and innovation even in the most seemingly mundane situations. Her way of working is painstakingly deliberate and cumulative, as she spends an enormous amount of time (day after day, month after month, year after year) in Harlem among her subjects - many of whom at this point are better described as her friends - so as to track the slow and otherwise imperceptible transformations of a community and its inhabitants through the changing uses of its public space and historic institutions. Yet her art is also joyous, visibly inflected - indeed, made radiant - by its unique glow of intimacy. By presenting for the first time the significance of her accomplishment, Barrat’s exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau will be an extremely important event, and in my opinion it is clearly deserving of generous support. I recommend Barrat in the strongest possible terms.

15 March 2014

To Whom It May Concern:

Martine Barrat is an extraordinarily talented photographer and videographer with a large body of work in locations as varied as France, Brazil, Japan, Cuba, Jamaica, and the Congo. For a number of decades now, her main commitment as an artist has been to the documentation of everyday life in black communities in New York City, where she has resided since the late 1960s. As a photographer Barrat has a rare capacity to draw our attention to the creativity, dignity, and resiliency of her subjects in the face of conditions that many would simply deplore or dismiss as predicaments of poverty or abjection. Her work demonstrates that those qualities in African American life are both a mode of resistance to deprivation, as well as a constant and conscious commitment to shared pleasure, to deep reservoirs of communal tradition and ritual, as well as to a range of unpredictable modes of social life that defy categorization and stereotype. She achieves this without polemic and without sentimentality. Barrat's art is characterized by the remarkable warmth and humility of her gaze and by her unique eye for beauty and innovation even in the most seemingly mundane situations. Her way of working is painstakingly deliberate and cumulative, as she spends an enormous amount of time (day after day, month after month, year after year) in Harlem among her subjects so as to track the slow and otherwise imperceptible transformations of a community and its inhabitants through the changing uses of its public space and historic institutions. Yet her art is also joyous, visibly inflected - indeed, made radiant - by its unique glow of intimacy.

I consider Barrat to be, along with Gordon Parks, Camilo José Vergara, and Chuck Stewart, one of a very small number of the most important New York photographers to emerge in the past few decades. As an invaluable artist of the city, she is eminently deserving of our respect and support.