Martine Barrat is a French photographer, actress, dancer and writer.

Early life

Barrat was born in

Oran Oran () is a major coastal city located in the northwest of Algeria. It is considered the second most important city of Algeria, after the capital, Algiers, because of its population and commercial, industrial and cultural importance. It is w ...

Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...

, but raised in France.. Formerly a dancer and actress, Martine Barrat was discovered by

Ellen Stewart Ellen Stewart (November 7, 1919 – January 13, 2011) was an American theatre director and Theatrical producer, producer and the founder of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. During the 1950s, she worked as a fashion designer for Saks Fifth A ...

at an international dance festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. "LaMaMa", as Stewart was known, then sent her a plane ticket to perform in her theater,

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (sometimes abbreviated as La MaMa E.T.C.) is an Off-Off-Broadway theater founded in 1961 by African-American theatre director, producer, and fashion designer Ellen Stewart. Located in the East Village neighborho ...

on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Barrat arrived in the United States in June 1968.

Career

In the late 1960s, Barrat was invited by the dancer

to New York to work on Stewart's

. Barrat traveled to Harlem to bring children to participate in the music and video workshops, beginning a lifelong dedication to the neighborhood. Stewart gave the group a building, and they began video workshops for the youth of the neighborhood. She would also collaborate with the Human Arts Ensemble. Around 1971, Barrat started to work with video in the South Bronx with two gangs: the Roman Kings and the Roman Queens, as well as the president of the Ghetto Brothers. She spent all of her time for years working with the members and sharing the video equipment, creating a series of videos between 1971 and 1976. The series, called ''You Do The Crime, You Do The Time'', debuted at Columbia and at the French embassy in a show organized by

Félix Guattari Pierre-Félix Guattari ( ; ; 30 March 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, Semiotics, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and created ecosophy ...

and

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...

, through their organization CERFI. In 1978, Barrat was awarded the prize of Best Documentary Filmmaker in Milan, Italy for the film. In Italy, Channel 2 aired the film several times at prime time. In America, earlier that same year, excerpts were aired on NBC. The Whitney Museum in New York also showed the film along with Barrat's first photography of the South Bronx, which was well-attended and well-regarded by the press. In the following years, she immersed herself in photographing the boxing world in New York, from young boys training in Harlem, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, to the Bronx. The resulting work was displayed at the consulate general of France in New York, with the book titled ''Do or Die''. In 1993, the photographs were collected in the book ''Do or Die'', published by Viking Penguin and prefaced by

Gordon Parks Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006) was an American photographer, composer, author, poet, and filmmaker, who became prominent in U.S. documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s—particularly ...

and

Martin Scorsese Martin Charles Scorsese ( , ; born November17, 1942) is an American filmmaker. One of the major figures of the New Hollywood era, he has received List of awards and nominations received by Martin Scorsese, many accolades, including an Academ ...

: "Patiently, painfully and with a highly discerning heart, Martine Barrat has filled our eyes with a world of young warriors eager to earn the honors of their hostile sport. ... A wistful, beauteous demeanor betrays the hardness that is already building in their hearts. ... with powerful pictures and strong words, Martine Barrat captures the spirit of young fighters who, with the other guy's blood on their gloves, return joyously to their concerns." In 2007, Barratʼs work was featured in the acclaimed Harlem In My Heart, a major retrospective at La Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. The show featured 190 photographs and her most recent video work and was reviewed and featured in over fifty international newspapers, magazines and radio shows. The French newspaper ''

Libération (), popularly known as ''Libé'' (), is a daily newspaper in France, founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968 in France, May 1968. Initially positioned on the far left of Fr ...

'' remarked that "'Harlem In My Heart' is not a monument to the glory of American blacks, but a collection of moments in their company, a rare intensity...it is almost impossible not to cry, the emotion is palpable." The photos of ''Harlem in My Heart'' were titled by David Murray, composer and jazz musician, for the show. Her involvement with the jazz scene in New York City has resulted in textual collaborations with jazz musicians, such as

Ornette Coleman Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, trumpeter, violinist, and composer. He is best known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album '' Free Ja ...

, who has given many titles to her photographs and written companion texts, and who curated a show including her work.

Collections

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

Bibliothèque Nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

*Lincoln Center Library *

Museum of the City of New York The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) is a history and art museum in Manhattan, New York City, New York. It was founded by Henry Collins Brown, in 1923Beard, Rick. "Museum of the City of New York" in to preserve and present the history ...

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York *

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL) and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide. Located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard (Lenox Avenue) be ...

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...

Whitney Museum The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

Literature

References

External links

Martine Barrat's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barrat, Martine Living people 1933 births Photographers from Paris Actresses from Paris French female dancers French women photographers People from Oran Dancers from Paris Photographers from New York City Pieds-noirs French women writers