Princeton photographer Ricardo Barros: fluent in both photos and words

BY PAT SUMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

N.J. ARTISTS

Last month, photographer Ricardo Barros gave a slide-talk about "A Few Things I've Learned Over 40 Years." To an overflow audience of Princeton Photography Club members, friends and family, he traced his career in photography, showing images from each period. Afterwards, "the crowd went wild."

For those he works with, Barros adds an unexpected element: he is uncannily articulate about what he thinks and does. All by themselves, his ideas and explanations make for easy listening.

More important, he would probably say, are his photographs, which reflect what he's all about. They're the external result of the introspection that drives him. Barros has referred to his career path as "non-linear and discontinuous, but with an inner momentum."

Born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, he and two sisters moved with their mother to the Boston area in 1960, when Barros was 7. He went on to earn undergrad and graduate degrees in civil engineering, then lived in Lambertville, NJ for a decade before moving to Princeton with his artist-wife, Heather, and their three children in 1990.

In 1996, he left New Jersey's Dept. of Transportation to become an independent professional photographer. He had a studio in Morrisville, Pa. for some time before his recent move to a capacious warehouse in Bristol, Pa.

Always interested in art and considered artistic early on, Barros had first encountered photography in junior high. "I wandered into the darkroom and saw an image emerge in a developing tray from a white piece of paper in that amber light — it was beautiful, magic! I was drawn to it because I thought it was like alchemy."

He also experienced a defining moment with photography in high school, when he saw an exhibition by Paul Strand. "I was looking at his photographs and my knees began to shake. I didn't understand what was happening."

That, Barros says, was when he "realized the power of aesthetics." Till then he had been mostly interested in the mechanical aspects of the photographic process, the technology, the craft. But slowly, he remembers, "the aesthetic qualities of photography began to overtake the technical.

"I'm a meticulous craftsman; I obsess on technical excellence. However, that's always subservient to the aesthetic image. Once I learn a process, the idea is to forget as much as I can about how I made it and focus on how I can learn from it."
Basically, Barros' photography work consists of fine art and professional assignments. In the latter, his client base ranges from schools to corporations and from cigars to custom builders. His fine art imagery — the focus here — encompasses most categories: documentary, figurative, landscapes, still lifes and portraits.

During his career, Barros has used all the classic film cameras before moving exclusively into digital photography. But he notes, "I still own a large format film camera and would gladly use it with the right opportunity."

His description of how he found his own way in photography would be instructive for newcomers to the field. Ansel Adams, Minor White, Paul Strand. . . he ticks off the photography greats whose work he's admired.

"Initially, I thought what resonated with me was their photography, their craft. I thought if I did what they did, I would experience what they were experiencing. It took me a long time to discover that they got there through photography, through their art form . . . but I couldn't step in their footsteps because that would lead me to where they were, which wasn't where I needed to go."

He realized, Barros says, that as much as he admired his heroes' work, that work was already done. In a voyage of self-discovery, he needed to give up the reassurance of doing something that produced known results — what others had done — and venture out to "something I didn't have control of, where I didn't know what would happen."

His "Facing Sculpture" project-turned-book was the game changer. Barros had been the de facto photographer in residence at Hamilton Township's Grounds for Sculpture for about 16 years, from its 1992 opening. During that period, he made artful images of art — an experience that must have played into his decision to produce a collection of sculptor portraits.

What he hadn't anticipated was that his interactions with the sculptors would change the nature of the images — from the "series of classic heroic portraits" he set out to do, to one quirky, inviting picture after another. Barros says he tried to create an art work parallel to each sculptor's, reflecting the artist's inspiration. As a result, his portraits include both the subject and her or his work.

He learned the sculptors represented different world views and models, and he especially admired those who had come up with their own model. For him as for them, the medium became a vehicle for self-discovery, not merely photographs. "The ultimate value of photography is that it's a way of connecting with life."

When we find out who we are, "something unique happens, something new and different emerges. It has to, because we're all unique," Barros believes. That's why he describes as "not at all the point" some people's belief that to be a good artist, they must do something new and different. Their pursuit of "different-ness" is false because that may not be who they are.

"Let it happen," he advises. "It's about looking inward and finding out who you are — then using that to produce what you want to produce."

As for production, and the self-study behind it, Barros is sure to have more to say the next time he talks about what he has learned.

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FACING SCULPTURE: A Portfolio of Portraits, Sculpture and Related Ideas. Image Spring Press, 2004. Purchase information is available in "Publications" on Barros' website, www.RicardoBarros.com. The blog section focuses on his fine art photography.

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Freelance writer Pat Summers also blogs at AnimalBeat.blogspot.com.