“I’m interested in the slippery narratives that my photos can communicate, and a good narrative always involves relationships of some kind,” said Tim Barber, whose exhibition “Relations” opens tonight at Capricious 88 on the Lower East Side of New York, and includes images of nude lovers, a cat, hands, and a breastfeeding child, among other things. “Photographs can be so literal, but I’m more interested in them as entry ways rather than finales; windows on a wall, question marks. Another way to put that is I’m less interested in what they are about then what they could be about.”
Barber, a pivotal player in the city’s photographic community, once served as Vice magazine’s photo editor. His practice includes commissions for the likes of Vogue Italia, New York magazine, and Nike, but series like “Relations” collect more esoteric images, organized into a new shape. Some of those images are idyllic, even romantic — like shots of roses or solar flares in the forest, and “Untitled (rain/shower),” 2013, which captures a naked woman behind a rustic shack. Others possess a hazier provenance — who is that mask-wearing kid caught in the woods in “Untitled (alien),” 2013? “There are some literal depictions of relationships in the series,” Barber said. “There’s a reoccurring couple shown in various degrees of intimacy, but I’m not trying to tell their specific story. I want them to appear iconic or symbolic, like an emoji that stands for the complications of love.” (Spoiler alert: It’s artist Aurel Schmidt and her boyfriend, Virgins’ frontman Donald Cumming.) “My relationship to the subjects will always be present, but it’s ultimately more about the viewer’s relationship with the images, and where that can lead.”
Barber shot the images in “Relations” using a combination of digital and film cameras. While he acknowledges that it’s the first time he’s exhibiting both types of photographs together, he’s not very precious about the distinctions between formats. “I grew up shooting film and printing in the darkroom, but more and more the argument for film is a nostalgic one, and I’m not really interested in that kind of nostalgia,” he said. “Process is process, images are images. In the future, when we can take 3D photos with our eyes, people will be nostalgic for the iPhone JPG.”
And while Barber has long been a proponent of the Internet-based photo community — he ran Tiny Vices before it morphed into his current website, Time & Space— there’s something integral about the way “Relations” can be experienced in physical space. “I think of images in sequence like notes in a song,” he said. “Different images hit different notes. Size, shape, and spacing set tempo and volume. I can’t ultimately control how the viewer experiences the work, but arranging those notes is very important.”
