PETER SCHNEIDER

Harlem in my heart

For half of her life the French photographer and filmmaker Martine Barrat photographed black New Yorkers in the northern part of Manhattan. The Chelsea Hotel at 22rd Street, between 6th and 7th Ave has the easy-to-remember house number 222 and a remarkable history. Dylan Thomas died here in this hotel because of alcoholic poisoning, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso have been writing poems and disputing here, Bob Dylan wrote some of his early songs at the Chelsea, Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols is supposed to have stabbed his girlfriend here. Today the red brick building with its cast-iron balcony railings and the green copper roof looks like a Hotel-beauty from Paris dating around 1900 that lost its way in Manhattan and is about to be slowly forgotten. On becoming a photographer, Martine states at the beginning of the interview, " it was not my choice, it happened to be so." She had left her loft at 22nd Street to buy milk. Eight kids from Harlem were being left alone there for just 5 minutes. Martine had planned to go on a vacation to Canada with them the same day. When she returned with the milk, her landlord stepped in her way, pointing a gun to her head, screaming: "If you don't get this black pack out of the house immediately I will kill you!"The very same day she moved into the Chelsea Hotel and stayed there. The walls of Barrat's appartment are covered with small and big photographs. She is playing a CD by David Murray and Mal Waldron. Martine did the CD-Cover, it is the portrait of one of "her" Harlem kids. Jazz and photos - these are fixed stars in Barrat's constantly provisional life. Martine Barrat who lives at the Chelsea Hotel for about 37 years is world-famous and wholly destitute. Her artist's career began as a dancer and actor in Paris. At the dance festival in Edinburgh she caught the attention of Elaine Stewart, the director of the New York cult-theatre "La Mama". "You should stay with us, and dance in my theatre", she said. One year later Martine Barrat found a ticket to New York in her mailbox that Elaine Stewart had sent her and her son. That's how she came to New York. A stage accident caused a multiple ankle fracture; her stage career as a dancer was over. At that time, she talked with Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, two great philosophers who wrote, “Capitalism and Schizophrenia” and Martine had told them that she wanted video equipment. They sent her to Canada to get the equipment from a university, so off she went along with five kids from Harlem and a great musician from St. Louis that she met at La Mama. With the musician, she started a program at La Mama called the “Human Art Ensemble,” a name given by Charles Bobo Shaw. She used to bring children from Harlem to the program. They had become her friends and taught her english, and the last step of dance of the week. She says they were the best teachers because they made her repeat everything over and over until she got it right. After she finished the program with kids and the musician, she decided to go to the South Bronx to work with gangs together on the films, alongside working at a bar to make a living. One day she came back at 3pm and the video equipment she brought back from Canada had disappeared. She discovered that the man next door had stolen the equipment through the window. She worked with one gang member for 6 years filming together, they were incredibly upset that they had lost their equipment. A few days later, Pearl, the president of the Roman Kings, arrived with his friends with a big package. In the package was a photography camera for her, they were sorry that they couldn’t afford new video equipment, but because of them, she became a photographer. Martine never thought she would touch a photography camera, she had always wanted to do video. They went along with the photo camera, acting as though it were a video camera. She began to take black and white pictures and produce video films at the South Bronx and in Harlem, and this was the beginning of hip-hop. The movement was going on very strongly. "I wanted to work with people who never had a chance to speak for themselves.” The people in Harlem and especially the kids in Harlem became her destiny. Since then on a daily routine in the morning she takes her photo-bag and goes to "her" Harlem-District". Every day she goes swimming at the public swimming pool in Harlem, in Harlem she has her friends and there she spends every day. Many of the members of the street gangs and the young boxers that she photographed in earlier times and that she took video films of have become old with her. She shows me a picture of the last group of kids and teenagers with whom she spent a summer camp-vacation in Canada - thanks to a generous donor of the film business. Her most famous book has the title "Do or Die" published by Viking Penguin, and in Germany by Rowholt. (German: Die Boxer, Rowohlt, Hamburg, 1991). She spent many years taking pictures of the boxers in the South Bronx, Harlem, and Brooklyn. These pictures don't judge. They show the coldness and brutality of the business but at the same time the pride and hope in the boxers' faces, the beauty and the vulnerability of the juvenile bodies. The unostentatious mastery of Barrat's photos is now appreciated by museums, galeries and art-critics from all over the world. Martin Scorsese has written a fascinating foreword to the book "Do or Die", Muhammed Ali has signed many of the photos, the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari have shown their respect for Martine's work in many ways, helping her each time she came to Paris, she even had a room at Guattari’s apartment, and she was working often for liberation. She denies the question if she follows a certain idea or conception when taking pictures. "Photography", she says, "is an act of love." You have to have the patience to wait for the right moment. One of her pictures shows a maybe 10 year old black boy, his arms stretched out to the left and to the right - with one hand he is holding a hat, with the other hand he is holding a jacket. Martine had asked the boy, Robert Humphrey what he wanted to be. An actor he had answered. They went together to different thrift shops and they picked out clothes that he might wish to wear when his dream would come true. One of Martine's favorite pictures shows an elderly couple in a jazz club. The woman seems to lean on to the man, who you see in half-profile, she seems to snuggle up to him. While looking at the picture it seems as if you're able to hear the blues and feel the rhythm to which the couple is moving. Days before this moment, Barrat explains, the woman, a jazz singer had been singing a heartbreaking love song. In the middle of the song, her husband who was playing the piano, had a breakdown and died all of a sudden. The photo caught that moment where the woman came back to the club a few days after his death, and Barrat took a photo of her dancing with her husband’s best friend to find comfort and support. Many of her more up-to-date pictures she took at the Harlem Jazz Club "The Rhythm Club" Musicians, people with extarordinary lifestyles, retired people, jobless people from Harlem spent most of their life at this Club - their "second home". They drank beer for one dollar, they cooked, played cards, later they made music. Martine used to go very often to take photos and spend time with the musicians, they would get together to play cards and enjoy life when they were not working. The walls were covered with her photography. The people were very happy to decide which pictures they liked the most of themselves. They catch transitory moments, involuntary expressions of the lives of those people who found their second home at the Jazz Club. And though it is never Barrat's intention to create dramatic moments, these pictures have a dramatic expression. The sentence "your camera did a good job" was something like a knighting. She made a movie called “The Last day of the Rhythm Club,” which shut down because the owner of the building wanted the place back. "These are very special pictures" says Emile, the very old administrator of the Club, speaking into Barrat's video camera before taking of her photos off the Club's walls with a lot of care.

These days Martine Barrat will be in Paris following an invitation of the french minister for culture, Frederic Mitterand. He will honor the "Picturegirl" with the highest awards of France for her artistically merits. He has promised to use one of her pictures as a background when he will be holding his speech. Martine Barrat will certainly listen to the selected and flattering words of this powerful figure of the official french culture but there will remain one question that she will not get out of her mind: "Besides the honor Mr. Minister, could you hand me a check as well so I am able to pay my rent at the Chelsea Hotel?"

SUBTITLES OF PICTURES

Her name was "Love" and she was in a hurry. (1993) Robert wanted to be an actor (1979). Today he is in jail. The little girl did not live in Adrian's block. So he didn't want her to be on the picture (1994). A party on New York's 139th Street. Breakdance had its breakthrough. (1984) The service was over but the bus was late (Harlem 1985). Marcy Williams died 2 weeks after this picture was taken. The kid lived in his neighborhood.

(1993).

© Peter Schneider for CICERO (English Translation Barbara Spering)