Biography

Paula Barr is a painter and renowned photographer living and working in New York.

Born in Philadelphia, PA, in 1945, she was raised in Mobile, AL during the tumultuous times of the 1960s. Barr studied painting at Boston University graduating with honors in 1967. Upon graduation, she moved directly to New York and set up her first studio in Manhattan’s Little Italy. There she joined the small burgeoning community of artists that included Laurie Anderson, Lynda Benglis, Joan Jonas, Julian Schnabel, Gordon Matta-Clark and Spaulding Gray, Trisha Brown, Frances Barth, and Harvey Quaytman among others. Barr spent days in the studio followed by a nightcap at Max’s Kansas City to connect with friends.

Painting was Barr’s first passion. During the early 1970s, she established her reputation through various group exhibitions at the Bykert Gallery exhibiting alongside artists such as Brice Marden, Ralph Humphry, and Dorothea Rockburne and others. Her paintings, purely abstract, were distinguished for their expressive yet controlled gestures that seemingly assimilated color field painting with a minimalist ideal. Her work was selected for inclusion in the Whitney Biennial in 1973.

In 1977, coinciding with her relocation to Mobile, AL, Barr turned her attention to photography. The painter-now-turned-photographer wanted her new craft to have the same impact as her large painting had. Her first grand photo endeavor was of a door at her home at 700 Government Street. Veranda Door is the size of an old Victorian window measuring 40 x 60 in.

In 1985, with the birth of her son, Barr broadened her palette to include photography and alternative media. She was an early practitioner of Cibachrome. She became an innovator in creating site-specific public art installations that melded photography and glass tiles. Her subsequent exploration of architecture, particularly the panoramic views of bridges and skyscrapers of Manhattan, resulted in Barr creating some of the most iconic photographs of New York. She was featured in an ABC Special called The World of Photography.

In 1995, Barr was commissioned to create Twilight Interlude for the Mobile Infirmary Medical Center, Mobile, AL. The 10 x 74 in photo-mural, composed of glass-photo tiles, earned the distinction as the largest photograph in the world by The Guinness Book of World Records. Other public commissions have been completed for the John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York, Penn Station, New York, the Columbus Circle station, MTA Subway, New York, and the Bellevue and Goldwater Hospitals, New York to name a few.

In 2008, Barr was invited by the World Economic Forum to present at their meeting in Davos, Switzerland. She exhibited Gulf Coast Echo Pre and Post Hurricane Katrina. The mural-size images showed the international leaders the drama of the natural disaster that was never-before captured. With the terrorist attacks of 911and subsequent fall of the World Trade Center Towers, Barr’s photographs of the buildings prior to the tragedy are now iconic for their stoic stillness.

The towering bridges that connect Manhattan to its outer boroughs and epic structures that make up the New York City skyline have been the subjects of some of Barr’s most celebrated images.

Since 1967, Barr has exhibited and is in the following collections that include: The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum and the Whitney Biennial, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of the City of New York, Bykert Gallery, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, New York Public Library, Smithsonian, Library of Congress, Chase Manhattan Bank, Getty Museum, Bill Gates Foundation, Henri Gallery, Neikrug Gallery, Newark Museum, Indianapolis Museum, Cincinnati Museum, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, International Photography Museum, New York State Museum, One World Trade Center, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Penn State University Gallery, Fine Arts Museum of the South, Huntsville Museum, Mobile Museum of Art and the John Samuels Collection.

Grants and fellowships include: National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1974), Z.B.S Foundation grant recipient (1976), A.I.R. Committee for the Visual Arts grant recipient (1976), Champion Paper Certificate of Merit (1982), Champion Paper Bronze Metal (1983), PIA Imagination Award (1983), NJ Art Directors (1984), Max’s Kansas City Project Grant (2020), Robert Rauschenberg Grant / NY Foundation for the Arts (2020), Artist Relief Grant (2021), Barbara and Carl Zydney Grant for Artists with Disabilities (2021), the 16th Annual Black & White Spider Awards (2021), and the London Photography Awards (2024).