I can't get Andrea Modica's gentle photographs of Barbara out of my mind, and I don't want to.





From Houk Gallery's press release:

A graduate of Yale University, Andrea Modica (b. 1960, Brooklyn, NY) first established her reputation with the success of her monograph Treadwell (Chronicle Books, 1996). In these images, Modica chronicled the life of Barbara, a young girl from a rural, impoverished community in upstate New York. Her book-length portrait examined Barbara?s life with empathy and unflinching directness, a vision that has been widely praised for it?s dream-like quality.

Modica?s collaboration with Barbara, which began in 1986, flourished into a 15 year project that continued well past the publication of the book Treadwell. In 2001 Barbara died of childhood onset diabetes which brought an end to the series and sparked a look back over the range of published and unpublished photographs. This inspired a new look at the photographs in their entirety as a tribute to the young girl?s life.

Many of the images in the exhibition are presented in public for the first time. Modica?s images of Barbara are alternately empathic and unsentimental, engagingly present and classically timeless. The lush tonality of the platinum prints etched across whisper-thin vellum intimates a resonant richness and grace found in the evanescent human presence.

A Guggenheim fellow, Modica has had her work exhibited extensively in the United States and Europe. Her photographs are featured in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institute, the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, among others. A longtime professor and guest lecturer, Modica has taught at numerous institutions including State University of New York, Princeton University, Parsons School of Design, Colorado College, Massachusetts College of Art, and Ithaca College. She currently resides in Manitou Springs, Colorado.