How Jane Birkin's daughter sought and found no salvation in photography: Kate Barry

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-17 17:22

She was widely talked about after the tragic events of 2013, but for twenty years, black and white photographs taken by Kate Barry graced the pages of all the leading glossy magazines in Europe. She was adored by the stars of European and American cinema, but her sister, Charlotte Gainsbourg, remained her favorite model. For many years, the camera served Kate Barry as a salvation from the impending darkness - until the darkness turned out to be stronger …

Before meeting with Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin had already been married - to the composer John Barry. In this marriage, Kate was born - it was 1967. True, when she was three, her parents divorced. For many years, Kate had no opportunity to meet with her father. Only when Jane Birkin left Serge, the girl was able to resume communication with John Barry.

Kate Barry's love for photography was very early on. Jane Birkin claimed that her eldest daughter never parted with a Polaroid camera from a young age - not even for a second. She often took pictures of her sisters, her mother, everything around … Kate herself did not like to be photographed. She felt vulnerable in front of the camera - and after all, the star family was constantly in the spotlight. Already an adult, she will create her only self-portrait, where it is impossible to distinguish between faces. This constant third-party interference with privacy, divorce of parents and inability to express their feelings greatly hurt Kate. She often said in her interviews that she had always felt sadness since childhood. Subsequently, she compared herself to a small bush trembling in the wind somewhere in the moors of Scotland. She shot such landscapes - gloomy, cold, tragic. Who would have thought, looking at her disturbing pictures, that Kate's childhood was spent on the Cote d'Azur. There was no escape from this all-consuming sadness, nothing could satisfy it … except a photograph. When Kate picked up the camera, she felt better. So photography became her life's work - trying to hide from loneliness.

Drug addiction became her other refuge. Barry started using drugs as a teenager. At the time when she asked for help, her "experience" totaled two decades. However, it would seem that Kate was able to overcome her addictions. In 1994, in Bussy-le-Lons, she opened a rehabilitation center for drug addicts, where treatment was provided completely free of charge, and founded a residential complex for people in difficult situations, funded by charitable organizations. Kate had never lived on the street, had never been homeless, but she understood these people in her own way - like them, she felt abandoned. Later, after her tragic death, an impressive collection of drugs and sleeping pills would be found in the photographer's Paris apartment. In the meantime, Keith Barry takes her camera and goes to the set.

Yes, yes - the path to photography began with cinematography. Kate appeared on the screen several times - in early childhood, with her mother, and then with Serge Gainsbourg in the film "Slogan". Barry never aspired to be an actress. However, in the 1990s she started working as a photographer on set, which subsequently led her to “glossy” photography. Her first models were four sisters and a mother, then her family friends, famous French actresses. Kate's lens turned out to be Catherine Deneuve, Sophie Marceau, Vanessa Paradis, Isabelle Huppert … She loved to photograph women, although sometimes she also took pictures of men.

The editors of glossy magazines simply adored the photographs she took - and the models captured on them were crazy about working with Kate. Her photographs contained sincerity and irony, frivolity and drama. Barry's style was very natural, very bohemian and very French. The queens of the screen fooled around, sat on the table, slid down the stair rail, hid in the closet … They felt relaxed and free with Kate - and she watched.

Barry was one of the first to set the vector for elegant casualness in the frame - disheveled hair, clothes in disarray, no fake smiles. She placed her heroines in strange and complex interiors, where they looked both lost and self-sufficient. Critics have often talked about the subjectivity of her models. Very often a woman in the eyes of a photographer becomes an object, a work of art, beautiful, but inanimate, with Barry it was the other way around - the individuality of her heroines was revealed more with each shot.

“For me, photography has always been about creating a world around women,” Barry explained her approach to photography. Indeed, all this - shabby walls and antique chairs, luxurious beds and school desks, layers of organza and lace - were just a frame for bright personalities, revealing themselves to Kate in all their strength and vulnerability. When Kate was asked about ideas, concepts, methods, she usually found it difficult to answer: "I cannot describe my creative language, it arose from my need to create my own universe."

She shot for all the leading glossy magazines - Elle, Vogue, Cosmopolitan. Others joined the galaxy of French stars - Monica Bellucci, Tilda Swinton, Helena Bonham Carter … Kate was engaged in advertising campaigns for Pierre Cardin and Dior, created the cover of Carla Bruni's debut album Quelqu'un m'a dit … She at least twice visited long and serious relations - with Pascal de Kermadec (their son, Roman de Kermadec, is now engaged in the preservation and promotion of his mother's legacy) and producer Uri Milstein.

It seemed that everything that tormented Kate in her youth was left behind. But on December 11, 2013, Kate Barry, having taken a huge dose of sleeping pills, stepped out of the window of her apartment in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. Then there were the shocking headlines, the investigation, the disappointing conclusions … She was only forty-six years old. To say goodbye to her beloved photographer came everyone whom she kept for eternity in her lens. Everyone who was there, not noticing the great sadness that once consumed Kate Barry.