Tina Barney, a legendary American photographer, has been documenting high society with a sharp eye for over five decades. Her works have entered the permanent collections of museums like the Whitney, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Barney’s relationship with style stems from her mother’s work with fashion photographers like Horst P. Horst and George Hoyningen-Huene. She has captured affluent Americans, European aristocrats, and lavish spaces, as well as what they wore, shooting for fashion magazines and major designers like Gucci and Bottega Veneta.
Barney’s greatest influences include Jan Groover and Horst P. Horst, whom she made films about. Her new book, Tina Barney: Fashion, features photos of her mother, taken by Horst P. Horst.
Barney has a deep appreciation for the Noguchi Museum, having done a whole book on the museum, which she considers a portrait of Isamu Noguchi’s building and sculpture. Her destination museum of choice is the Musée d’Orsay, where she enjoys the unique way paintings are hung.
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She recently saw a Brice Marden show at Gagosian that impressed her.
Barney’s style icons include her mother, whose sense of humor and personality led her fashion choices. She recalls attending an Yves Saint Laurent fashion show in Paris with her mother when she was 16, which left a lasting impression. Her mother also took her to see designer Guy Laroche after the show, where she had a suit made to her measurements.
In 1974, Tina Barney moved from New York City to Sun Valley, Idaho, a quiet, picturesque ski hamlet set within the Rocky Mountains. This move marked a significant point in her life, as she began taking an art school class on great American photographers, which eventually led her to start shooting photographs herself.
She has a picture of herself from about when she was age 14 and she’s wearing a suit that looks like a Chanel. And because they were starting to copy her at that point, you could get a viable suit for someone 14 or 16 years old that looked like a Chanel. She loves that the style of Chanel has existed for so long, and has not changed that much.
