Tom Baril Photography

Baril, Tom (American, b. 1952) Large format silver gelatin print still life of flowers photo. hand signed and dated 1997 by Baril in pencil below image. black and white photograph. image measures 24.5" x 19.5"w, framed measurements are 37"h x 32"w. Tom Baril is a contemporary American photographer best known for his Polaroid and wet-collodion prints of flowers, landscapes, and architectural studies of buildings and bridges. Born in Putnam, CT in 1952, he received his BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in 1980. In his last year at school, Baril began printing for the famed photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, where he learned a number of important techniques. Baril's botanical images more closely resemble those of Karl Blossfeldt, a photographer in Weimar Germany. Baril shoots most of his extreme floral closeups with a pinhole camera. But unlike Virginia-based pinhole photographer Beth Beck, Baril uses his camera for resolute directness. Baril's photographs, like his former employer's, often carry a sexual charge, though their eroticism is typically sublimated. Notably, the sexiest flower around, the orchid, is nowhere to be seen. Rather, the translucence of Brugmansia (1998) immediately—and vividly—brings to mind those famous '30s glamour shots of Greta Garbo. And the vibe in Baril's creamy Calla Lily (1998) owes less to Georgia O'Keeffe's sexually explicit floral paintings of the species than to Irving Penn's sinuous fashion photography. The works in the New York series look timeless, betraying not even the stray clue that they were made after 1950. Baril's images of bridge spans, old skyscrapers, and marble columns could easily have been shot by Lewis Hine or Alvin Langdon Coburn...