Barry Kornbluh

(US, 1952)

During the early 1970s, Kornbluh began photographing while pursuing a degree in Art History. He moved to New York in 1977 and studied photography with Lisette Model who guided him towards a personal and intuitive style. During the 1980s, he worked in the archive of Magnum Photos and later freelanced as assistant to Elliott Erwitt, Susan Meiselas and Paul Fusco. Soon he was taking on his own assignments which included photographing the New York jazz scene as well as making portraits of literary and art world notables. However, his personal work remained at the forefront.

In the 1990s, Kornbluh moved to Amsterdam, where his poetic images of family and friends captured in grainy black & white took on new importance. In 2006, he joined Kahmann Gallery and would soon gain recognition for his dark and dreamy nudes and atmospheric landscapes. Although Kornbluh is a master of analogue photography, he has recently embraced the digital printing of his work allowing him to produce images in large formats.

Kornbluh published Almost Home (print on demand) in 2009 and Exposure (Y-Publishers) in 2019, both edited and designed by Roy Kahmann. Widely exhibited in the Netherlands, the USA and Japan, he remains committed to a signature style marked by intimacy and mystery, developed over forty years.

Kornbluh’s work can be found in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. and the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, New York as well as the collection of Howard Greenberg.