Thomas Barrow's work displays a designer's concern for materials and process while addressing issues that are "fundamentally intellectual, challenging the viewer to interpret the multiple references to contemporary culture, art history, and literature."

Barrow was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1938. He earned a bachelor's degree from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1963 and a master's degree from the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1967. Barrow does not limit himself with traditional approaches to photography in his investigation of contemporary American culture. He explores photographic process and recycles images from a variety of sources to produce multi-layered images that are often dense and complex.

Barrow was employed at the Eastman House from 1965-1972, working as curator and editor of Image. In 1972 he moved to New Mexico to become Associate Director of the University Art Museum in Albuquerque. Barrow is currently a professor in the Department of Art at the University of New Mexico.

Bibliographic Reference: Gauss, Kathleen McCarthy. Inventories and Transformations; The Photographs of Thomas Barrow. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1986.

George Eastman House holds work from most of Barrow's diverse series. His early work is represented by gelatin silver prints of automobiles (1964-65), "Fashion", and works using found images, montage, and negative images. Work from the late 1960s includes TV montages, "Pink Stuff", and "Pink Dualities", both pink-toned diptychs. Verifax matrix prints produced as experiments with an early office copy machine date from the early 1970s. One print by Barrow, from the "Libraries" series (1977), and six from "Cancellations" (1973-1976), are held at Eastman House. Barrow's continued interest in experimentation and collage are represented with lithographs, and a more recent spray-painted photogram, a caulked reconstruction, and a 20x 24" Polaroid.

The museum acquired Barrow's work in various transactions from 1967 through 1990. Gifts of work were received in 1967, 1972, 1978, 1989, and 1990 from Barrow and other donors. Works were purchased in 1967, 1970, 1979, 1980, 1982, and 1989, and with NEA funds in 1974, 1975, and 1978. Four of Barrow's works came to the museum in 1986 as part of the Chase Lincoln First Bank's corporate photography collection.

Del Zogg, 1/96