Within the vernacular of American documentary photography, Tracey Baran’s pictures are notable for their unusual blend of candor and empathy. During the past decade, she has been recording the story of her life and those around her, producing a visual diary in which spontaneous moments and posed arrangements are effortlessly intermingled.

Our second one-person presentation of new works by Tracey Baran will feature twenty 30×40 inch color photographs produced between 2002 and 2005. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with seventeen color illustrations and autobiographical notes.

In the fall of 2004, Baran and a friend drove across the United States. For both women, the journey was one of self-revelation. For Baran it was also an artistic epiphany—the great American road trip in the tradition of Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander. But, in contrast to their distanced observations in black & white , Baran’s photographs are deeply personal, depicting a colorful, internal terrain in which even clichés (like the moonrise in New Mexico) acquire new emotional resonance.

Last year she began to produce the group of self portraits that form the centerpiece of this exhibition, her sixth solo show. Also on view are recent photographs of friends, family and important places: her cousin Chris, covered in elaborate tattoos that he designed himself; her mother dressed as an Indian for Halloween (her family’s version of Thanksgiving); the demolition derby at the County Fair; an uncanny face-off between her father and brother; her friend Kristden, enshrouded in mist at Yellowstone Park.

Baran’s prosaic images combine formal clarity with narrative ambiguity. The exhibition shares its title with a recent photograph in whichshe appears in a passionate exchange, her lover’s hand obscuring an expression that could be either intense pain or pleasure. In the catalogue she writes:

See Through Me is the title of a photograph that I made about intimacy - getting to know someone, opening up and learning to see through a second sense - the way blind people can by feeling with their hands. It’s basically what happens when I show my work—you see through me. You see what I see.”

Tracey Baran was born in 1975 in Bath, New York, a small town in western New York State. She has lived in New York City since 1993, when she enrolled at the School of Visual Arts. She is currently participating in Speaking With Hands: Photographs from the Buhl Collection at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.