Martine barrat biography

“Martine Barrat is an artist who photographs how she breathes, she sees, she feels, she participates, and at the same time she knows how to make herself.
Martine Barrat is a French photographer, actress, dancer and writer.
Martine Barrat is an artist who photographs how she breathes, she sees, she feels, she participates, and at the same time she knows how to make herself.

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Martine Barrat

Photographer, filmmaker and videographer, Martine Barrat has been photographing the residents of Harlem, Brooklyn, and the South Bronx since 1970 and has been working in Japan, Cuba, and Brazil. She first gained international acclaim in 1978 with the groundbreaking video You Do The Crime, You Do The Time for the New American Filmmakers series at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The video, which depicted the lives of young gang members in the South Bronx, was a collaborative effort between Barrat and the gang members with whom she shared video equipment. In the following years, she immersed herself in the world of boxing in New York. She photographed young boys training in Harlem, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn to the Bronx, ultimately resulting in a book titled Do or Die. In the introduction Barrat states, "Upon finishing my book, my dream was for Muhammed Ali to write a few lines. Ali asked me to send him my photography. Three days later I received an overnight express envelope. It contained the pictures I'd sent him. Each one was signed differently, with

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	© Antoine Monory

Martine Barrat was born in Oran, Algeria and raised in Paris, France. Since relocating in New York in 1968, she has established herself as a photographer, videographer, and filmmaker best known for her vivid images of life in Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant and the South Bronx. She is the author of My Friends, published by Yohji Yamamoto in 1987, with a foreword by Makoto Ooka, and Do or Die (Viking/Penguin), her intimate view of young boxers, with a foreword by Martin Scorcese and an introduction by Gordon Parks.

Her work has been widely exhibited in the US, Europe, Japan, Africa. In 2001 she was awarded the medal of The Order of Arts and Letters from the Ministry of Culture and Communication of the French Government. She is currently at work on Do you See Your Face, which expands on her twenty-five years of Harlem imagery. She is based in New York.

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Martine Barrat

Photographer and video artist Martine Barrat was born in Algeria, grew up in France and moved to New York in 1968. She was discovered by Ellen Stewart at an international dance festival in Edinborough, Scotland. “LaMaMa”, as Stewart was known, then sent her a plane ticket to perform in her theater, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club on the Lower East Side of Manhattan; Barrat arrived in the United States in June 1968 and began collaborating with the Human Arts Ensemble. Stewart gave the group a building, and they began video workshops for the youth of the neighborhood.[1] Barrat herself traveled to Harlem to bring children to participate in the music and video workshops, foretelling her lifelong dedication to the neighborhood.

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