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for THOMAS F. BARROW
THOMAS F. BARROW
Thomas Barrow's work displays a designer's concern for materials and process while addressing issues that are fundamentally intellectual, challenging the viewer to interpret the multiple references to contemporary culture, art history, and literature.
Barrow was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1938. He earned a bachelor's degree from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1963 and a master's degree from the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1967. Barrow does not limit himself with traditional approaches to photography in his investigation of contemporary American culture. He explores photographic process and recycles images from a variety of sources to produce multi-layered images that are often dense and complex.
Barrow was employed at the George Eastman House from 1965-1972, working as curator and editor of IMAGE. In 1972 he moved to New Mexico to become Associate Director of the University Art Museum in Albuquerque. Barrow is currently a professor emeritus in the Department of Art at the University of New Mexico.
His early work consists of gelatin silver prints of automobiles (1964-65), the "Fashion" series, and works using found images, montage, and negative images. In the late 1960s, he worked on TV montages and pink-toned diptychs. His acclaimed Verifax Matrix prints produced as experiments with an early office copy machine date from the early 1970s. The Brown series, CANCELLATIONS, is perhaps Barrow's best-known work: vandalized negatives printed with great care offering views of the Southwest. Barrow's continued interest in experimentation and collage is clear in his later works, including lithographs, spray-painted photograms, caulked reconstructions, and 20x 24" Polaroids.
Gauss, Kathleen M. INVENTORIES AND TRANSFORMATIONS: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF THOMAS BARROW. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987. Also from The George Eastman House web site [http://www.geh.org/fm/mismis/htmlsrc14/barrow-intro.html] accessed 2/26/07.
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