Exhibition: Tim Barber / Tinyvices
Photographer Tim Barber has long been a central figure in the photography community, known for his curation of the influential website tinyvices. Through his site, Barber has fostered a passionate community of photographers over the past two decades, many of whom starting out as relative unknowns, to now being some of the key artists working in photography today.
Following a 14-year hiatus, Barber has relaunched the site, marking its 20th anniversary with a major group exhibition. The group show features work from over 100 photographers, including: Asger Carlsen, Leo Fitzpatrick, Jerry Hsu, Ryan McGinley, Jason Nocito, Lina Scheynius, Dash Snow, Peter Sutherland, Ed Templeton, Nick Zinner and many, many more.
Barber’s decidedly DIY ethos has lead to these special independent projects popping up over the years, opting to avoid the trappings of depending too greatly on the many platforms that have existed for photography. We caught up with Tim ahead of the launch of the exhibition this week in NYC at The Hole gallery to understand why tinyvices went away for such a period, and why it’s (happily) finally returning.
Peter Sutherland / Dash Snow
“It was a kind of boom time for the internet, I mean, it was the beginning of us having more agency in it. I was definitely not the first to have a photography blog, but it was still kind of unusual to have, at the time. I never intended to turn the site off, I had thought I was putting it on hold to build something else. I built another website called ‘Time and Space’ which was really an attempt at building a social network for photography, but I was just a few years too late to launch and competing with the rise of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook was just impossible.”
Jerry Hsu / Tim Barber
“I was thrown into the deep end, going straight from art-school in Vancouver to being the photo-editor of Vice Magazine in NYC. It was a crazy education and an interesting launching pad for a young kid in New York, but I had built a community of photographers and I would only manage to publish a small fraction of the work I liked in the magazine, so tinyvices served as an outlet for that additional work. It was a place I could share the work I was personally interested and excited about; it was a kind of magazine in its own way.”
Robin Schwartz / Peter Sutherland
“I had started with Vice Magazine in 2003 and this was the reason for the name, tinyvices, as it was intended to be an offshoot of my job there. Shortly after starting the site in 2005, I left Vice and the site took its own direction; but it was definitely born out of that job.”
Skye Parrott / Elisabet Daviosdott
“I’ve been asked many times what an image for tinyvices ‘is’ or what I would look for, and it sounds like a cop-out, but I just don’t have an answer. It’s like the old saying, you know it when you see it. It’s personal taste, and that has a lot of variables to it. There are definitely some things that I would say I’m generically drawn to, like I’m very interested in documentary, diaristic and journalistic photography; in other words ‘real life’ which I know is bad nomenclature [laughs].”
Alexandra Demonkova / Corey Arnold
“I was always interested in photography, from a very young age. We had lots of photography books in the house growing up, because both my parents were photography enthusiasts. I took photography classes quite early on, around the ninth grade but I credit skateboarding and snowboarding for how I really got into photography. Skateboaridng and snowboarding photos have always been kind of ‘extra creative’. I would go out and try to do it myself; try to find a way to document my friends and our adventures.”
Ryan McGinley / Reza Nader
“I never imagined it would become a career at that time, it was just what I was interested in. I go through phases, I get really myopic and obsessed with things, ordering and collecting things. I love a pile, I love dealing with a pile of something and making sense out of it, figuring it out.”
Ed Templeton / Adam Bordow
“The first physical tinyvices exhibition was in 2006 at Spencer Brownstone gallery in NYC. That then travelled to London at Claire de Rouen, Paris at Colette, Mexico City, Tokyo and a few other places. It was really fun to see this work in print versus online.”
Tim Barber (Jonnie Craig) / Asger Carlsen
“For the 20th anniversary of tinyvices, I thought it would be fun to have a party and a slideshow to launch the new site. These days with a young kid and different priorities, I always like to keep things as simple as possible. But when I mentioned this to Kathy Grayson (tinyvices contributor and curator / owner of the Hole Gallery in NYC), she suggested doing a full show at her space.”
Balarama Heller / Daosuke Yokota
The Tinyvices archive 20th anniversary exhibition, curated by Tim Barber will run from February 8th - 23rd with an opening reception on Saturday the 8th from 6 - 8pm at The Hole Gallery, 312 Bowery, New York City.
Featured artists in order of appearance: Peter Sutherland, Dash Snow, Jerry Hsu, Tim Barber, Robin Schwartz, Peter Sutherland, Skye Parrott, Elísabet Davíðsdóttir, Alexandra Demonkova, Corey Arnold, Ryan McGinley, Reza Nader, Ed Templeton, Adam Bordow, Asger Carlsen, Balarama Heller & Daisuke Yokota