Photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron Displays Her “Table Tops” and “Mirrors” Sequence with Neverstill Wines – SURFACE

In the Hudson, New York tasting room of Neverstill Wines, a fastidiously curated exhibition of images by Jeannette Montgomery Barron brings an introspective edge to the elegant area. The photographer, lauded for her portraits of cultural figures—Mapplethorpe, Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, and Willem Dafoe amongst them—right here presents two extra evocative our bodies. Imagery within the “Table Top” sequence depicts “meals about to be eaten, some are meals that have been eaten,” Montgomery Barron tells Surface. “I never set them up—they’re all ‘found meals’ or sometimes, meals my husband, James, and I have had together or with friends.”

“I take all the Table Top series photographs with an iPhone,” she provides. “I actually started out with an iPhone 4 or something; now I’m using a 15. I think my favorite model of iPhone camera was somewhere in between these two. I usually photograph in the late morning in Italy, when tables are being set up for lunch and the light is just right. Then again in the late afternoon or early evening.”

“Mirrors,” as a sequence, act like a research of identification—devoid of an individual, however with persona or temper implied via coloration and composition. Montgomery Barron took the primary photograph within the sequence, Mirror #1, in 1991 after a detailed buddy had died of AIDS. “I didn’t really know what to make of the photograph until James, who is the best editor of my work, encouraged me to keep photographing this mirror,” she explains. “He then found another mirror for me to photograph. 35 years later, I’m still photographing the same two mirrors, although now in color. I think of the ‘Mirror’ photographs as self portraits, of how I am feeling that day.”

Victoria Hood of Agency Esta and Theo Coulombe of the gallery Standard Space approached the photographer with the thought of an exhibition at Neverstill. “We met at Neverstill’s tasting room a few weeks later to envision the installation and how it could work,” she says. Coulombe and Hood visited Montgomery Barron’s South Kent, Connecticut to pick out the works. It was a fast course of, with “Mirrors” and “Table Top” items deemed instantly resonant with Neverstill rooms.

The exhibition, aptly entitled “Introspection and the Shared Table,” will run via December 31. Montgomery Barron was readily available for the July set up. “Even when the placement of the works are planned and set, sometimes there are changes once you’re actually in the space with the works. I find the installation process very creative and enjoyable,” she says. To expertise the items on the partitions of Neverstill is to know find out how to dwell with the work of an artist who asks you to interact—to look nearer, and look inward.