@ Barkley L. Hendricks. Untitled, 1991, archival inkjet print. 26 x 39 inches (image), 27 x 40 x 2 inches (framed). © Barkley L. Hendricks, courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery

Written by Sophie Mulgrew

What does it mean to be real? To be presented in a realistic way? For renowned photographer Barkley Hendricks, capturing realness was all about everyday instances of obscurity; a pair of high heels without an owner perched on the Great Wall of China, a young girl posed next to a nude mannequin on the sidewalk. It is the particular oddness of Hendricks’ images that make them so captivating. Known for rarely leaving the house without his camera, Hendricks took pleasure in documenting everyday encounters and synchronicities. Over his lifetime, he developed a portfolio of work that told the story of his personal, real, America.

@ Barkley L. Hendricks. Untitled, 2004, archival inkjet print. 16 x 24 inches (image), 16 1/2 x 24 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches (framed) © Barkley L. Hendricks, courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery

Now, six years after Hendricks’ death in 2017, the Jack Shainman gallery has put on an impressive exhibition of the artist's photographic work, featuring many images that had never been publicly shown before. The show, titled, “Myself when I am real”, invites viewers into Hendricks’ world and challenges them to consider life from its most unusual angles.

The exhibition is extensive and eclectic, including images taken throughout Hdnricks’s career in a variety of places and showcasing a plethora of different techniques. Many of the photos are particularly focused on their human subjects. In one a small boy in a suit peers upwards as he pulls open a car door, in another, a woman sits in front of a fold out table with a large-scale painting of a horse next to her– behind her, two very real horses munch on the grass.

@ Barkley L. Hendricks. Untitled, 1989, archival inkjet print. 16 x 24 inches (image), 16 1/2 x 24 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches (framed) © Barkley L. Hendricks, courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery

@ Barkley L. Hendricks. Untitled, c. 1980, silver gelatin LE print. 16 x 24 inches (image), 16 1/2 x 24 5/8 x 1 1/2 inches (framed) © Barkley L. Hendricks, courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery

If there is one through-line in the exhibition, it’s Hendricksons’s interest in the manipulation and mobilization of framing. In many of the photos, the subject of the image is seen through one or multiple layers of environment. For example in the reflection of a mirror, behind a window, or on the screen of a vintage tv. Hendricks takes an interest in serendipitous moments of framing; in which his subjects are oriented not just by the frame of his camera, but by the dynamic world that surrounds them.

@ Barkley L. Hendricks. Untitled, 1979, archival inkjet print. 26 x 39 inches (image), 27 x 40 x 2 inches (framed) © Barkley L. Hendricks, courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery

A particularly striking example of this technique is Hendricks’s portrait of a nude woman reclined on a bed in an overwhelming red room. The viewer only sees the woman’s reflection in a mirror, next to which in another mirror, is the reflection of Barkley Hendricks himself, holding the camera aloft. The image is a reflexive meditation on the camera and its wielder. Viewers must consider not just the photo as a stand-alone piece of work, but as a crafted story; a collaboration between Hendricks, the camera, and its subject. The looming frames of the mirrors are perhaps the most provocative element of the photograph. They dilute reality - once in the room itself, and again in the inner workings of the camera. They ask viewers if images are every, truly, real. Or if, perhaps, the joy of photographs is in their disruption of a perceived reality, and their ability to present the world in a light all of its own.

Jun 1 Barkley Hendricks | Jack Shainman Gallery

Jun 1 Loving | The Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell Collection

May 31 Jas Leonard

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