Tina Barney

Tina Barney was born to a wealthy New York family in 1945. She began collecting photographs in 1971, which sparked her interest in doing her own work. In 1976 she and her husband moved to Sun Valley, Idaho, where she took photography classes at the local art center. During the 1980s Barney developed her photographic vision, focusing on the comfortable lives of the social elite; as a member of this class herself, she is able to photograph friends and family in intimate social settings usually unseen by the outside world. Barney's work is characterized by rich colors and deep focus, achieved through controlled lighting, that capture the material details of the lives of her subjects. Barney lives in New York City and Watch Hill, Rhode Island.

National Museum of American Art (CD-ROM) (New York and Washington D.C.: MacMillan Digital in cooperation with the National Museum of American Art, 1996)