Photographer Jeannette Montgomery Barron Exhibits Her “Table Tops” and “Mirrors” Series with Neverstill Wines

In the Hudson, New York tasting room of Neverstill Wines, a carefully curated exhibition of photographs by Jeannette Montgomery Barron brings an introspective edge to the elegant space. The photographer, lauded for her portraits of cultural figures—Mapplethorpe, Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, and Willem Dafoe among them—here presents two more evocative bodies. Imagery in the “Table Top” series depicts “meals about to be eaten, some are meals that have been eaten,” Montgomery Barron tells Surface. “I never set them up—they’re all ‘found meals’ or sometimes, meals my husband, James, and I have had together or with friends.”

“I take all the Table Top series photographs with an iPhone,” she adds. “I actually started out with an iPhone 4 or something; now I’m using a 15. I think my favorite model of iPhone camera was somewhere in between these two. I usually photograph in the late morning in Italy, when tables are being set up for lunch and the light is just right. Then again in the late afternoon or early evening.”

“Mirrors,” as a series, act like a study of identity—devoid of a person, but with personality or mood implied through color and composition. Montgomery Barron took the first photo in the series, Mirror #1, in 1991 after a close friend had died of AIDS. “I didn’t really know what to make of the photograph until James, who is the best editor of my work, encouraged me to keep photographing this mirror,” she explains. “He then found another mirror for me to photograph. 35 years later, I’m still photographing the same two mirrors, although now in color. I think of the ‘Mirror’ photographs as self portraits, of how I am feeling that day.”

Victoria Hood of Agency Esta and Theo Coulombe of the gallery Standard Space approached the photographer with the idea of an exhibition at Neverstill. “We met at Neverstill’s tasting room a few weeks later to envision the installation and how it could work,” she says. Coulombe and Hood visited Montgomery Barron’s South Kent, Connecticut to select the works. It was a quick process, with “Mirrors” and “Table Top” pieces deemed immediately resonant with Neverstill rooms.

The exhibition, aptly entitled “Introspection and the Shared Table,” will run through December 31. Montgomery Barron was on hand for the July installation. “Even when the placement of the works are planned and set, sometimes there are changes once you’re actually in the space with the works. I find the installation process very creative and enjoyable,” she says. To experience the pieces on the walls of Neverstill is to understand how to live with the work of an artist who asks you to engage—to look closer, and look inward.