Jeannette Montgomery Barron

"Something was happening and everybody knew it. I can tell you one thing: it was a lot of fun". With these lines Jeannette Montgomery Barron opens Scene, the book that is an intense photographic gallery of portraits of artists, gallerists, critics, dealers and personalities from the New York art world in the 1980's. It is precisely this approach of the very young photographer who experienced the art scene of New York, where she arrived in the late 1970's, that brings to us an insider's as well as an outsider's view of this very exciting cultural moment in a city where "eclecticism" and "divergence" were the norm.
In New York the scene which developed in the East Village and Soho, the transgressive and energy-filled cultural milieu that was perceivable in clubs like Area, Mudd Club, Odeon, and of course in Warhol's Factory, echo in these intense and magnetic photographic portraits. They convey the clear understanding of how and why these artists became true icons and cult figures.
More than a book, the volume is a personal diary where the photographer has jotted down notes, collected photographs shot in studios, homes and clubs, letters, and mementos of events linked to her life in New York in the Eighties, further enriched by artists' recollections of that period. A journey that certainly does not want to be philological but intimate and minimalistic, in its attempt to convey the sense of a special moment in time to those who had not experienced it.

Portraits of:
John Ahearn, Donald Baechler, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mike Bidlo, Ross Bleckner, James Brown, Sandro Chia, Francesco Clemente, Enzo Cucchi, Moira Dryer, Eric Fischl, Fischli & Weiss, Julio Galan, Leon Golub, Peter Halley, Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Alex Katz, Barbara Kruger, Annette Lemieux, Robert Mapplethorpe, McDermott & McGough, Luigi Ontani, Rene Ricard, David Salle, Kenny Scharf, Julian Schnabel, David Shapiro, Cindy Sherman, Starn Twins, Philip Taaffe, Rigoberto Torres, Andy Warhol.