From the Archive (Feb 21, 1988): New York photographer can thank her Mobile roots
Published on the occasion of Paula Barr’s return to Mobile, AL, this feature article original appeared in the Mobile Press Register on Sunday, February 21, 1988. The article traces Barr on assignment in Port City photographing the original Mardi Gras in a joint project for Ken Hansen Photographic, Fuji and the Globus Brothers.
By MARY LEE CONWELL
Press Register Reporter
Paula Barr can thank her Southern roots for her New York photographic career.
Ms. Barr shot her first photograph in Mobile more than a decade ago of a red dirt road near Theodore Industrial Park. The photo, appropriately called "Red Dirt Road," launched what has become a highly successful career in a highly competitive medium—panoramic photography.
Ms. Barr spoke about her career earlier this week during a photo assignment in Mobile. She spent five days in the Port City photographing the original Mardi Gras in a joint project for Ken Hansen Photographic, Fuji and the Globus Brothers.
The project arose out of Hansen's need for a panoramic photo display. Knowing Ms. Barr’s top reputation for panoramic photography, he asked her to submit images of her previous work. Ms. Barr won the assignment and convinced Hansen that Mardi Gras would be the perfect subject for his display.
She used three different cameras to get the panoramic effects of the parades, the docks, the balls and the masses of merrymakers. She used Fuji Neopan ISO 400 film in the Fuji Panoramic 617 which photographs 105 degrees around, the Fuji six by nine, which photographs 90 degrees and the GlobuScope which photographs a complete 360 degree circumference.
"This was the perfect environment for the GlobuScope," Ms. Barr said. "It's a very special visual event for me," she said about Mobile Mardi Gras, speaking not only of colorful pageantry but of her upbringing here. The Philadelphia native grew up in Mobile and was graduated from Davidson High School. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Milton Briskman, and two brothers, Donald and Arthur Briskman, still live here.
Ms. Barr left Mobile to make her way in New York as a painter of “color field paintings,” she said. "I was educated as a painter."
From 1967 through 1977 she spent eight to nine hours a day in her studio painting large canvases. That career lasted until 1977 when she and her husband Jack Krueger moved back to Mobile.
When Ms. Barr returned to Mobile, she decided she could not paint here. “I couldn't paint here because it was better for photographs," she said, explaining she views painting as a medium in which the artist’s interpretation of her subject can improve the understanding of or give new depth to that subject. Ms. Barr felt the scale and proportion, vibrant colors and the light and shadows provided by the space and bright sun in Mobile needed no interpretation by a painter's brush.
“There seems to be a literalness about information here,” Ms. Barr said. “Things are naturally composed here."
The same time, “I was introduced to a new photo print process which used vivid color dyes that offered a range and effect similar to a painter's palette—Ilford Cibachrome,” Ms. Barr said in a 1986 article in the Professional Photographer magazine.
Paula Barr, “Red Dirt Alabama,” 1977
With these discoveries, she photographed “Red Dirt Road.” The painter-turned-photographer wanted her new craft to have the same impact as her large paintings had. She tried her first grand photo endeavor of a door at her home at 700 Government Street. “Veranda Door” is the size of an old Victorian window, 40 by 60 inches, and still hangs in her husband's office.
The work that Ms. Barr may not have discovered had she not moved back to Mobile is the very thing that gave her the ambition to move back to New York. Although her husband wanted to stay in Mobile (and is ready to move back here anytime, she said), Ms. Barr realized her photographic career needed the type market found only in New York.
Ms. Barr is now one of New York's photographers known for the detail and depth apparent in all her photos. "I don't manipulate the image," she said. “I have to work clean and direct.” Her work is exhibited in such places as Bellevue Hospital, Goldwater Hospital and Pennsylvania Station.
The Pennsylvania Station project was “a real challenge to create,” Ms. Barr said. The mural she created there is 2 ½ feet height by 52 feet long and is viewed by 250,000 people every day. She said she photographed panoramas in the four directions from atop One Pennsylvania Plaza and pieced North, South, East and West directions together in the 52 foot mural.
"It was an odd assignment," she said.
At Bellevue Hospital she had to find images for two eight by 18 foot murals which would draw patients out of their rooms to speed their recovery process. After a hospital psychologist completed a study of the patients’ needs, Ms. Barr photographed "Brooklyn Bridge at Dusk" and "Queensboro at Night" which are exhibited in the hospital's day room.
She is now producing a mural for the New York Port Authority’s Bus Terminal in the heart of the Times Square area. Ms. Barr is also working on a desk calendar which will feature all the bridges in New York City.
“I love the production of photography,” Ms; Barr said. Her work involves a good deal of pre-production work often times with several assistants and a team of clients.
“It’s all about teamwork,” she said, “When I'm working with someone, I'm constantly asking client what results he wants."
Ms. Barr is expanding her photographic/business talents to a new business called Large Format. She explained the new photo stock agency will provide exclusively panoramic photographs.
She will send a videocassette catalog full of panoramic photographs to interested clients. After viewing what is available, the client may order a photo (for a fee) to use in whatever project he may be putting together.
The agency will not consist solely of her photos, Ms. Barr said, but will give other panoramic photographers an avenue by which to sell their work.
As far as her recent visit to Mobile goes, she said the Mardi Gras panoramas will be viewed immediately as murals in New York City and she is working to get them featured in a national magazine.
