4 - Martine Barrat - Soul of the city

Jul 6, 2026 – Oct 4, 2026

An artist with many lives, Martine Barrat has developed a body of work outside of the traditional circles of photography, centered on a main theme: New York and its marginalized neighborhoods. A dancer in 1960s Paris, she moved to New York in 1968 at the invitation of Ellen Stewart to perform at her theatre, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. Following an accident that ended her dancing career, she founded a workshop combining jazz music and video for children from the Lower East Side and Harlem. In the early 1970s, she undertook a documentary project with South Bronx gangs, the Roman Kings and the Ghetto Brothers. The film You Do the Crime, You Do the Time, screened at the Whitney Museum in 1978, marked the culmination of this collaboration. When her video camera was stolen, Pearl, president of the Roman Kings, gave her her first photo camera. Barrat then began a remarkable body of work, driven by her enduring curiosity about the street, its codes, and its ways of life. Never moralizing, she is an integral part of the neighborhoods she photographs. She knows that, despite the harshness of their environment, the residents continue to live and love, and that it is her responsibility to photograph them with respect and commitment. The scenes, people and gestures captured on film thus form a celebration of life and human relationships. With Do or Die, she photographs children training in boxing clubs in search of a better life. From the 1980s onward and with the same energy, she portrays the residents of Harlem, who have become her close friends and with whom she shares her daily life. In 1982, while in Paris for the newspaper Libération, she discovers the neighborhood of La Goutte d’Or and documents the bonds that unite its residents. As was the case in New York, her gaze is driven by a constant attentiveness to her subjects—the participatory and collective aspects being a fundamental dimension of her work. Agathe Cancellieri