Tim Barber: Untitled Photographs

Photographer Tim Barber shares his subtly beautiful observations in this series from Untitled Photographs. Spanning 15 years of his career, the forthcoming monograph from OHWOW assembles Barber’s works together for the first time.

How did you put the book together?
I don’t work in themes. This doesn’t represent a time period or a body of work, it’s just an edit of images that span my entire life of being a photographer. I always think I’m making puzzle pieces when I’m taking pictures and then trying to assemble some bigger picture out of those—even though there isn’t one necessarily. There’s infinite ways I could put it together.

Is it liberating to work that way?
Well, yes and no. It goes both ways. I have thousands of photos. I think of photographs like they’re clues to something, there’s some element of mystery or something mystical––a hint at something larger, a bigger story, a bigger narrative. Below he talks about his work..

Does curating come naturally to you?
As you can see [gestures at his studio space] I like to keep organized. I think it’s a by-product of that: I am OCD-organized. Even when I was at school, I would look at someone’s work and want to fix it, organize it—accentuate the good qualities. It’s an instinct thing.

Text and images nowness