MICHEL CRESSOLE

As he sat her on his laps, Louis Armstrong predicted to the winner of the be-bop contest: "one day, little girl, you will come to Harlem and you will never leave again.” Martine Barrat is the winner, in Oran, where Yves Saint-Laurent is having an enchanting vacation dressing his dolls. The street has fascinated Martine ever since. Extremes attract her: at fifteen and a half, she goes to the Nordic Countries. She lives there ten years. She is a gardener, a stripper, a worker in a whale oil factory, she studies sculpture and sandstone, Around 1965, Paris discovers her, as a dancer with Gabrielle Martinez, as a comedian with Copi. She organizes shows, connecting The Soft Machine and The Pink Floyd bands with arabic musicians. In June 1968, Ellen Stewart (La Mama Experimental Theater) invites her to New-York where she decides to settle. With Charles "Bobo" Shaw, she creates the Ateiler Vieo-Jazz for the kids of the Lower East Side and Harlem. She works with jazz musicians from Saint-Louls. In 1970, she makes "Women is sweeter", a 40mn portrait of Yves Saint-Laurent. On his commission, she makes two other movies: "Collection 1971" and "Parfum". Starting 1n 1973, Martine Barrat records over 100 hours of video tapes and 16mm films with gangs of teen-agers from the Bronx. She encourages them to use the equipment that Ornette Coleman lent her. The result of this is two movies: "You Do the Crime, You Do the Time" and "Vickie, Queen of the Roman Queens.” They are shown at the Whitney Museum and awarded "Best Documentary; of the Year" for 1978 in Italy. Her equipment is stolen, not by her friends from the Bronx but by the junkies children of her intello-artists neighbours at the Chelsea Hotel. Left without video, she borrows an Olympus and takes her first photographs in Jamaica. Now, she is always in Harlem. With her Leica 4, she goes from training-rooms to churches capturing the flamboyant street kids and the glamorous grand-mothers. When she is in Paris for one of her exhibit, she spends her time in the district of the Goutte d'Or. As many portraits she makes, as many friends she has. Her video tapes are at the Whitney Museum of American Art where they can be seen at the Donnell Library, also at the G.Pompidou Center in Paris. Her photographs are at the Museum of Modern Art of New-York, at the Museum of Harlem, at the G.Pompidou Center, also at the Picture and Sound Museum of Sao-Paulo (Bresil).