Richard Barnes

b. 1953 - Newark, NJ
1963 - Polaroid introduces color film
-Architectural Photography
1989 - Loma Prieta earthquake, California
1995 - Legion of Honor

documented its
renovation after
the earthquake
It was discovered that the museum had been built upon what was once Golden
Gate Cemetery. What began as architectural documentation turned into an
investigation into the largest post-gold rush era cemetery ever excavated. Over
two years, applying his experience from the excavations in Egypt, Barnes created a
body of work documenting the disinterment of hundreds of burials from beneath
the foundations of the museum.

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 Animal Logic Series 2004

Barnes followed the logical steps and turned to the collections of different
institutions for his work. Barnes began a body of work based on the role of the
museum in contemporary culture.
-Egyptian Museum in Cairo
-Smithsonian Institution,
-Museum of Comparative Anatomy in Paris
-Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Animal Logic Series 2004
 “My work is all about containment.”

Animal Logic Series 2004

Animal Logic Series 2004
 This work looks at the museum as a “container” of
the celebrated and the forgotten, the odd and the
everyday, representative of the dreams and
aspirations of the person, culture or nation that
assembled it.

Animal Logic Series 2004

Animal Logic Series 2004
1997 - Unabomber trial
 “In 1998 Barnes was commissioned by the New York Times Magazine to
photograph the cabin of Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber. Kaczynski, our
homegrown philosopher/terrorist now serves a life-sentence in prison for crimes
committed out of dedication to a cause, madness, or both.
In addition to Kaczynski’s incarceration, his rural home was also seized, as if
architecture itself were to be put on trial. The cabin, representing that iconic ideal
of rural self-sufficiency and simplicity was, in this case, seen as a container of evil
and depravity.”

Unabomber Cabin (Sacramento) 1998 Unabomber Site (Montana) 1998

“The cabin was shipped
across the  country to be
used as evidence in his trial.
My work looks at historical
and contemporary artifacts
(in this case the cabin
and its site),  and using the
imagery and methods of
architecture /archaeology
it attempts to bridge the
gap between the banal and
the extraordinary, the cult
of celebrity and the
seductiveness of the
infamous.”

Unabomber Exhibit A-D 1998

2005 - Murmur

Starling
migration
in Rome

Murmur 1 Nov. 15, 2005

Murmur 8 Dec. 14, 2005
Murmur 14 Jan. 21, 2006
Murmur 13 Jan. 20, 2006
 Timeline
• 1953 Born, Newark, NJ
• 1963 Polaroid color film introduced
• 1979 B.A. University of California, Berkeley
• 1979 Begins work as an architectural photographer
• 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake hits San Francisco Bay
• 1994 Photographs the renovation and cemetery excavation of the Legion of Honor
• 1995 Photographer for book on SFMOMA
• 1995 Architectural restoration photographer for National Endowment for the Arts
• 1996 Photographs the closed Stanford University Art Museum
• 1997 Unabomber trial
• 1998 Commissioned by New York Times Magazine to photograph Unabomber shed
• 2000 Unabomber, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
• 2001 Still Rooms & Excavations, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA
• 2004 Animal Logic, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco
• 2007 Murmur, Hosfelt Gallery, New York
my master photos:

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