Joseph Tidline Reviews Tim Barber

Tim Barber is a photographer, curator, and publisher. He runs a an online gallery and image archive www.tinyvices.com, which he founded in 2005. He photographs mainly fashion and portraits, but he also has a very large collection of personal photos that he recently has been exhibiting around the country. These untitled photos cover a variety of topics and tend to lean towards the documentary style.

A lot of his work is intimate. Even with fashion photography, he appears close to the models both physically and emotionally. I particularly like his use of color, a demure color palette loaded with grays, greens, and blues. 

Here Barber combines place, subject, and color create a tone that feels heavy. Where the light touches less on objects, pictures glows like a light bulb within the images. Another technique Barber likes to employ is creating a massive landscape plopping a person in it (albeit not a dead person). I do think these images are probably his strongest technically but not all that interesting to me. I prefer those odd moments and people that he meets and photographs. Seeing what Barber has to say about them through their framing and composition feels more like an opinion and less like, "Oh that's pretty." 

Another great thing about Barber is that he is constantly promoting other artists' work, which is important for creating vibrant and contemporary art communities in any area. I think as students we should always try to collaborate on projects and get in contact with the greater San Antonio area.