After graduating from The Cooper Union School of Art, Stephen Barker
assisted for Hans Namuth and architectural photographer Wolfgang Hoyt.
Shooting professionally since 1985, his portraits on location have
appeared in Vanity Fair, Italian Vogue, Forbes, Quest, ARTnews, Elle Decor,
Arts & Antiques, Out, Details, Metropolitan Home, and Wolkenkratzer.
In response to the AIDS crisis he worked within ACTUP, managing
the Brooklyn Needle Exchange for two years, and also shot Nightswimming, published by Twin Palms in 1999.
Underlying all his subject matter is an ongoing fascination with the
emotional weight of light and with the mechanics and politics of
the very act of looking. He has had solo exhibitions in New York, Boston,
Paris, and Zurich, and taught at the International Center of Photography, NY,
and Bennington College, VT. His work is in the collections of the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library’s Collection of Prints & Drawings,
the Center for Creative Photography, Arizona, and Fundacion Televisa, Mexico.
Most recently, his project Restoration* was shown at Cologne’s Museum Ludwig
in the group show The Eighth Square, and a long-term work, The Archivist's Wig,
was exhibited at the Bernard Toale Gallery in 2008.
He lives on New York’s Lower East Side.
On 9th St in conversation, by Peter Hujar
On Montauk, with Dick Avedon, by Lizzie Himmel
(Not me, my Dad, the Jazz drummer)
On a shoot for Vanity Fair, by Ellen Weissbrod
On an interiors shoot, by Wolfgang Hoyt Sitting in for Philippe de Montebello, by Hans Namuth
Photographing the Schappel twins, stills from the A&E film Face to Face by director Ellen Weissbrod
Temple elephant blessing in India, by Maxine Henryson; photographing dhobi wallah stones on the Ganges
