Everyone now knows how influential the downtown art scene was in New York in the 1980s and Jeannette Montgomery Barron was fortunate to be right in the thick of it all, close friends with many who became legends. Her portraits of Warhol, Basquiat, Haring, Schnabel, Clemente, and many others uniquely captured their personalities, and most importantly, the era. Montgomery Barron wasn't merely a journalist or outsider documenting this scene. The fact that she was good friends with so many of these creative people meant there was instant trust between subject and photographer, resulting in rich, revealing portraiture. Jeannette Montgomery Barron was born in 1956 in Atlanta Georgia and studied at the International Center of Photography in New York. She became known for her portraits of the New York art world in the 1980s, which were later published in Jeannette Montgomery Barron (Edition Bischofberger, Zurich, 1989).
