Jeannette Montgomery Barron Biography

Jeannette Montgomery Barron was born in Atlanta Georgia and studied at the International Center of Photography, NY, NY. She became known for her portraits of the New York art world in the 1980s, which were later published in Jeannette Montgomery Barron (Edition Bischofberger, Zurich, 1989). Her next book, Photographs and Poems (1998), a collection of her still life photographs, was a collaboration with the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham. Mirrors (2004) includes a text by the celebrated author Edmund White. In 2006 she published Session with Keith Haring, 20 photographs taken by Jeannette Montgomery Barron in Haring's studio one afternoon in 1985. In My Mother's Clothes, Jeannette Montgomery Barron created a poignant portrait of her late mother through still life images of her cherished clothing, shoes, and personal possessions. As her mother's struggle with Alzheimer's progressed, robbing her of any remembered past, Jeannette Montgomery Barron began this unique visual album as a way of both sparking her mother's memories, and coping with her own sense of loss. Scene (2013) is a remarkable compendium of portraits of renowned personalities from arguably the most exciting era of New York City underground culture-the 1980s-when the young and indomitable flocked downtown in search of places to work and live among like-minded collaborators. These musicians, filmmakers, painters, writers, fashion designers, publishers, actors, models, and photographers played together, worked together, made their own rules, and changed our culture, as we know it, forever. My Life in the 1980's New York Art Scene (2014) was published in conjunction with a major exhibition of Jeanette Montgomery Barron's work at Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy.

On October 13, 2016, The American Academy in Rome opened the exhibition, A View of One's Own: Three Women Photographer in Rome, which featured Jeannette Montgomery Barron's photography along with Esther Boise Van Deman and Georgina Masson. The exhibition traveled to The Arthur Ross Gallery at The University of Pennsylvania and was shown there from September through December 2017.

Jeannette Montgomery Barron photography is in numerous public and corporate collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Kunsthaus, Zurich; Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy; The Archivio Fotografico, American Academy in Rome and The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. She has shown internationally at Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich; Scalo, New York and Zurich; Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta; ClampArt, New York; and Magazzino D'Arte Moderna, Rome.