Washed out hues, American pride and well-heeled Rhode Islanders typify the large-format colour photography of Tina Barney, whose portraits of East Coast social elites are loaded with woozy glamour. Sitting halfway between reality and a dream, the contrived element of Barney’s scenes is blurred by her spontaneous capturing of images, which give us a sense of the good life that’s always on the cusp of disappearing for good. The uncertain political future and splintering national identity of America today complicates the symbolism of 4 July; whether or not to celebrate the holiday is a divisive decision among some Americans. But it is precisely this split personality, self-conscious grandeur and fabricated drama that make Barney’s images—4th of July on Beach (1989) among them—a picture-perfect vision of fraught times.
