Tabitha Barnard spent her girlhood in the verdant, sprawling hinterlands of rural Maine, surrounded by deep forests and rolling fields and secluded places for wild swimming. Religion was a huge part of her formative years, and she recalls the way her extended family – staunchly Christian on her mother's side – would go to church at least twice a week. "While they were very religious, my parents always really encouraged our imaginations and fantasy games. We were pretty isolated and relied on each other for company often, so a lot of my images deal with this fantasy world we created in the lake and woods of the New England landscape."
The 'we' Barnard is referring to is herself, the oldest child, and her three sisters: Claudia, the middle child, and twins Grace and Sophie, the youngest. "Since there were four of us while we were growing up, we would split into teams a lot," she says. "For a long time, there was a lot of tension between the two separate factions (me and Claudia vs Grace and Sophie). We loved scaring ourselves by pretending there were witches in the woods, and we loved dramatic makeup, hair dye, and dress up. I have a vivid memory of getting permanent red dye on my mum's brand new curtains, and the intense fear that bonded Grace and I as we tried to wash it out."
As the girls got older, Barnard began photographing them compulsively, and it became a shared experience, she says, that grounded them and brought them closer together. "There was this beautiful symbiotic relationship and collaboration between all of us to make the pictures."
Here, Barnard talks to Refinery29 about the ideas behind her ongoing photographic collaboration with her sisters, and shares some of her favourite images with us.
"Nearly every photograph I make is of my sisters. Sometimes I’ll photograph my cousins or close friends but the main body of work is always Claudia, Grace and Sophie. I think I wanted to start documenting them when I realised the situation we were raised in was not a universal one. I wanted to start to expose that part of my life to viewers. Sometimes I’ll visualise an image in my head and then meet up with my sisters to make it. But other times I’ll see them do a specific motion or in a specific light and just know I need to make that photograph. I usually make them repeat the pose or action over and over again until it feels organic. It drives them crazy but I just keep pushing until I get the picture I want."
There's overt symbolism relating to religion and the church in Barnard’s pictures, but there’s also a presence of occult imagery and objects – seemingly conflicting themes all wrapped up in her exploration of femininity.
"When I was growing up I loved to read bible stories that were specifically about powerful women or witches. It was almost like watching a horror movie for me at that age. The occult was so forbidden, my mum totally believed in demons and scared me so badly that to this day I’m horrified that I’ll accidentally communicate with some kind of dark force. Because of that, it became a really strong undercurrent in my psyche and my work. The church was so prominent in our lives. Claudia still goes every Sunday. But there were certain members of the church that demonised femininity often, and bible stories, like Queen Jezebel, that did the same thing. The first time I read about the Whore of Babylon I was terrified, but her description was so vivid and beautiful. I knew these were things I wanted to play with, using my own sisters as actors."
Given that she photographs the place she grew up in so intensely, Barnard believes there is a certain part of her that is trying to work through her own teen experiences, using her sisters and other subjects as a conduit, unpicking what it means to be a part of that world and the pressure on young girls of being that age.
"I still remember the intense emotions and psychical changes of being a teenage girl and wishing I could make others confront my reality then. (I also want to clarify that my experience with womanhood is not totally universal, the photographs are about myself and my sisters who are cisgender. The scope of womanhood and being a teenager only gets more complicated for each female-identifying or queer person.) I struggled between my sexuality and what I was taught in youth group. I watched my youngest sister struggle with her own queer sexual identity. I was never into journalling but when I discovered photography I felt like I had discovered this powerful tool to visually express to everyone how I was feeling. I had the ability to give my sisters agency in their own stories of maturation. Photographs of women are so often made for male consumption and I wanted my pictures to be about something darker and more confrontational. I love using beauty and abjection to subvert that gaze."
"I love the drama!" Barnard muses. Her images feel almost like film stills, rich and cinematic as if shot through Sofia Coppola's eyes. "I was very into theatre as a kid and did lots of community plays. That transformed into a love for movies and that cinematic, dramatic lighting that you find in both plays and film. More often than not the images are directed by me or one of my sisters will give me an idea and then I’ll try and flesh it out in a photograph. It becomes another game for us to create the staged pictures. Almost akin to how we were playing when we were younger. I love sewing costumes for them to wear in specific pictures and they all love doing their makeup and preparing for the scene. I always want to create a narrative (not necessarily a linear one) about being a young girl trapped in this isolated emotional and psychical landscape. Setting up the photographs and controlling the emotional tone of the lighting is really important to that idea."
Photographing one's own family is a particularly emotive act and Barnard says that even though she sees her work as more performative than documentary, she still has real moments of reflection when looking back at the images she's taken. "They are like this amazing document of my family over the years. I frequently send old images I took to my sisters now. We love laughing at ourselves or what we thought was a good haircut or outfit. But at the same time, Grace and Sophie can basically watch themselves go through puberty, a time that I photographed pretty relentlessly. Seeing that transformation from girl to woman is something I have a really strong emotional reaction to when I look at the breadth of the work. They don’t react at all to a camera anymore, the reaction I get is when we convene for what Claudia has dubbed 'sister therapy' and no photographs are allowed. I feel compelled to make images of them at all times, it’s like an animal instinct now. And I think I’ll always feel that need to continue this project even if it moves out of my primary focus."
"I watched myself, my friends, my young cousins, go from being children to sexualised objects immediately, when really there is such a gradual change. Teenage girls are so often referred to as jailbait, makeup companies advertise to girls younger and younger each year. I think the pressure is only getting stronger to become desirable and sexual as soon as possible. Women for consumption or women as a small plot point in a man's story has always made me kind of ill but it’s still so pervasive in the culture. In the political climate in the USA right now it's such an important issue. I wanted to show that women and girls could be complete and unique characters as teenagers and young women."
"Being on the cusp of adolescence is so transitional and scary and it is so often depicted as a nightmare. I want to display the beauty and growth that takes place during that time. And most importantly depict a triumphant story of unrestricted feminine emotions and close female friendships. It’s obviously not all fairy dust and rainbows but it is such an important formational stage of life and depicting it so two-dimensionally, as a lot of pop culture does, really does it a disservice."
"One of my favourite images from this series is this one of Claudia with cherries staining her teeth. I love it because it always makes me think of communion and drinking the blood of Christ. But it also references vampires, and eternal youth is captured forever in a photograph. I was sitting with her during a family vacation in June while she was eating cherries hand over fist. When I looked over at her she smiled and her entire mouth was blood red. The skin of a half-eaten cherry was still stuck to her hand. She looked ridiculous and scary and the whole thing was so reminiscent of summer for me."
"Another favourite photograph is this one of my mum's leg and her scar. She had surgery on that leg after getting into a horrible car accident in high school. I almost never photograph my mum because she’s so self-conscious and so self-aware of the camera that it’s hard to get a picture we both like. But she finally allowed me to photograph a piece of her that I know feels really private to her. My mother opening up to me like that and revealing her scar not only to my camera but to other viewers too felt really important. I felt like at that moment she was also opening up to my work and truly understanding what it was about. That scar and her actions speak to me about the strength in healing and in mothers as a whole. And I’m forever grateful to my mum each time she lets me point the camera on her."
"Finally, this image of all three of my sisters standing on the end of a dock will always be really important for me. They got into that formation on their own and they were standing like that as I walked down from the house to join them. I love how Claudia is sunbathing in a bikini, Grace is in her more fashionable one-piece swimsuit and Sophie is wearing this sporty suit. Sophie was so self-conscious and self-deprecating about her suit during the photographs. The fact that the pressure to look a very specific type of 'sexy' had made its way into this situation was really gut-wrenching. They are each really individual here and you get to see all the sisters and their unique style and sense of self, rather than them individually or as a unit, as I typically photograph them. Sophie’s stance looks so powerful and unwavering, and both the twins almost look like they're guarding Claudia while she's tanning. The photo could have so easily become three pretty girls in their swimsuits but their stances and expressions transcend that entirely."
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