Emily Ratajkowski takes on the role of Miss in the latest campaign for Self-Portrait, photographed by American artist Tina Barney. Barney’s first European retrospective, showcasing over 40 years of her work through 55 photographs, is currently on display at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. Although Barney has spent years photographing celebrities and creating fashion campaigns, the focus of this exhibition isn’t on fashion. Instead, she delves into her creative roots, where clothing serves as a symbol of something more lasting than seasonal trends.

 

From Photographing Loved Ones to Staged Photography

 

Photographs from Theater of Manners, Barney’s first monographic (and one of her two most significant) publications from 1997, open the Family Ties exhibition at the Jeu de Paume. While browsing this album in the museum bookstore before even entering the first room, I was drawn to a 1977 photograph, The Ocean House, showing the spacious porch of an American home—the only photo I’ve found with no people in it. From the 1970s onward, Barney’s camera has primarily been aimed at people, starting with her family, friends and sons (all of whom she still photographs, seeing this documentation as a way to express deep love over decades). Her initial setting was Rhode Island, where this self-taught artist simply observed everyday situations and familiar people. Gradually, she noticed herself gravitating toward recurring themes: gestures, clothing details, interactions, and interiors. She soon realized she wanted more control over her compositions. Her first staged photo, Amy, Phil, and Brian, was taken in 1980. She positioned her family members at opposite ends of the family pool to highlight the growing sense of distance that, in her view, characterized interpersonal family relationships at the time. In the early 1980s, intervening in the frame was not a common practice—photographers like Garry Winogrand were in vogue, and although their aesthetics were quite different, their images shared a sense of naturalness and spontaneity. However, Barney consistently developed her own artistic language. Inspired by Italian Renaissance painting and 17th-century Dutch art, she still creates compositions dense with scenic details and subtle tensions between her subjects. It feels as though she can transform a single photograph into an entire episode of a series, where each deliberately highlighted element seems to reveal something about the characters' relationships and backstories.

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Tina Barney Reveals How Europe's Upper Class Lives

 

Barney's aesthetic quickly gained recognition. Her works were featured in The Big Picture exhibition at New York’s MoMA in 1983, one of the most significant showcases of large-format photography at the time, highlighting new approaches to subject, composition, and technique. The exhibition focused on photographers who used large formats and high resolution to capture the intimacy and complexity of everyday life. The large format, attention to detail—which, as the artist notes, shapes the composition so that the eye delves deeper into each small aspect—and her consistent focus on people are integral elements of Barney's photographic language. Over time, her subjects expanded beyond her immediate family. Between 1996 and 2004, Barney traveled across Austria, England, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany, documenting the domestic lives of Europe’s upper-middle-class and aristocratic families. This journey culminated in The Europeans, the second of her key projects, which offered audiences a glimpse into the exclusive world of the well-born (though, as subtle details in Barney’s photos suggest, not necessarily happier). Although she has long captured private spaces and their inhabitants, it’s clear she isn’t passive in what she sees. Could it be coincidence that Mrs. Castelli, in the photograph Mr. and Mrs. Castelli (1998), stands beside a sculpture of a young girl gazing at her reflection in a mirror, implying vanity? Or that the positioning of the daughters in The Daughters (2002) reflects the ideals of perfection imposed by their parents? And what about the mother’s gesture, controlling her daughter in the foreground, echoing the image of a predator restraining its prey on a tapestry behind them? Sometimes, I wonder if these details are deliberate commentary, a playful nod, coincidence—or perhaps all three. One thing is certain: their presence in the frame is no accident. Although Barney leans into staging, her power lies in her sharp observational skills.

 

The Uniqueness of Places and the Universality of Human Relationships

 

The Paris exhibition highlights everything that makes Barney’s photography so compelling to me. Her frames walk the line between staged and spontaneous, specific and universal, critical and humorous. Her works are also full of codes. For Barney, clothes, like opulent interiors, are more than aesthetic choices; they symbolize deeper social markers. In her commercial projects, however, this dynamic often seems diluted, where the impact of both fashion and image is diminished. In her personal projects, she captures authenticity from her non-professional subjects, but with professional models, this naturalness often fades, losing some of the impact. In the recurring suits, uniforms, cocktail dresses, and pearls in Theater of Manners and The Europeans, fashion becomes more than a statement of taste; it signifies a belonging to a specific social class. Yet, the longer I look at these images of aristocratic families, the less I see just clothes or interiors and more the relational dynamics between her subjects, complete with tension and friction. Barney captures two distinct, closed worlds: both her own family and the global upper echelons, realms most of us wouldn’t access outside her photos. And once inside, we see, contrary to our fantasies, that there are no perfect worlds. Instead of assigning value, Barney shows us that, at heart, we’re all just human.

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Family Ties is on view at the Jeu de Paume in Paris until January 19, 2025.