A native of Liverpool, England, fresh-faced Claire Barrett has a headful of Pre-Raphaelite curls, a strong Scouse accent, a quick wit, and a surprisingly raucous laugh. A bundle of creative energy, she has five (yes, five!) websites to highlight the different facets of her business: wedding photography, fine art photography, photography workshops, commercial and lifestyle photography, and event photography. While Shakespeare may believe “a jack of all trades is a master of none,” in Barrett’s case, nothing could be farther from the truth. She truly excels in each area of her craft.
Her passion for photography (“I thought it was the closest thing to magic I’d ever seen in my life! I absolutely loved it!”) stems from her time as a student at the University of Lincoln, which she attended despite her working-class parents having “high hopes I’d become a doctor!” Graduating with a BA in Film/Video and Photographic Arts, she became head of media studies in a high school in Kent before emigrating to Los Angeles.
Barrett first worked in the art department of movie sets and says it was years before she got back into photography. “Los Angeles is a difficult city,” expensive, proving hard to get around and to build up a client base. Success and recognition were slow to arrive, but arrive they did, and wedding shoots took her as far afield as Morocco, Italy, and Bali (my favorite images are of a traditional Shinto marriage at the Meiji shrine in the heart of Tokyo,) and she developed a skill for capturing niche weddings such as Indian ceremonies and LGBTQ celebrations.
Simultaneously, she was building an impressive roster of both high-end event patrons and luxury product and lifestyle clients such as Veuve Clicquot, Dom Perignon, Moet & Chandon, Rolls Royce, Chanel, Fendi, and Louis Vuitton.
An ex-relationship brought Barrett to Savannah. Here, she felt inspired by the faded genteel beauty, the walking accessibility compared to her two-to-three-hour car rides in LA, and the European “and magical” feel of the city. For the first time, she had the freedom and the inspiration to create her own artwork and, committing to making the city her home base, she purchased a house, mere months before lockdown.
“During COVID I had no work whatsoever. One of my clients, the single malt Scotch Glenfiddich, hired me to do some Zoom webinars to teach staff how to take better quality photographs with their phones. That led to Google hiring me to teach their employees. So that was it, a few webinars and one product photo shoot during the pandemic.”
Barrett loves to teach and offers photography, styling, and post-production-techniques workshops in Santa Fe, NM, Point Reyes, CA, and Savannah, GA with future plans to include Tuscany and Tokyo. She’ll also be partnering with a makeup artist to provide wedding photography workshops in Savannah. Interestingly, a recent wedding shoot in Newgrange, Ireland (home to a UNESCO World Heritage Site passage tomb from the Stone Age) was the inspiration for her next workshop location this July.
She is one busy lady…shooting about twelve weddings a year (“But I’d like to do more here. Savannah is the number two wedding market in the U.S.”); frequent trips to L.A. for product shoots; numerous shoots for luxury lifestyle clients near and far (“My next event is the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Miami”); and teaching workshops. But when in town, Barrett makes time for her own fine art, and that is the reason for our meeting: to discuss her upcoming show “Southern Belladonna” which opens Saturday, April 22 at Location Gallery.
Barrett’s personal work (displayed on FigmentGallery.com) is where her imagination has free reign to create landscapes and magical interiors containing beautiful women, exotic animals, and enchanted children. Her “Crepusculum” series contains haunting, twilight images of a flamingo on the stately avenue of oaks leading to Wormsloe; a tiger lounging in the shadowy stairwell of the former Raskin’s Antiques mansion; a pair of elephants in the gloaming of Forsyth Park. Another collection, “Odyssey,” portrays children on snowy mountain crags posed with white owls, lynx, leopards, and tigers. Truly, one feels one has stepped into the mysterious, dreamlike lands of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia or J.R.R. Tolkien’s Misty Mountains.
Location Gallery director Peter E. Roberts was blown away by an opulent and disturbing image she submitted for last May’s “Southern Discomfort” group show benefiting the Flannery O’Connor Home. That piece, entitled “The Host,” featured a woman looking at her reflection in a cake knife while touching a snake entwined around her neck. “I couldn’t wait to see what else she’d come up with!” he says. “She creates a whole world where you believe the contents are entirely possible. Her narratives are amazing, while her choices of colliding images work seamlessly.”
That photograph will be included in her series of sixteen limited-edition “Southern Belladonna” acid-free archival prints, impeccably framed and mounted behind non-reflective museum glass. Barrett explains that the title of the show is derived from the term Southern Belle paired with the deadly poison Belladonna that for centuries was used as a beauty enhancement for the eyes. “When I got here, I was impressed by these attractive, formidable, and extremely capable Southern women. These images are all about not underestimating them. It’s like they have dominion over nature.”
The models, locations, lighting, props, “Mad Men”- era wardrobe, makeup, and southern wildlife were all carefully thought out: every nuanced detail is considered and purposeful. “It’s basically a fashion shoot with added elements. And it’s the most fun!” Barrett exclaims. “I love my job. I get to play a lot. On shoots like this, I’m in the zone, everyone is doing what they’re good at, and then it all comes together.” Only one male model appears in the photographs. Clearly discarded by his powerful paramour, Barrett laughs when she tells me the title of that image is “Rooster one day; Feather duster the next.”
As we close our interview, I ask her if this kind of fine art photography is her true passion. She quickly answers, “No. My other fine art has nothing to do with photography at all! My passion is sculpting.” Currently, she is experimenting with making relief sculptures in a papercrete medium at public artist and acclaimed sculptor Jerome Meadows’ MeadowLark Studio. “I’m also excited to learn about the lost-wax method of casting,” she says. So, stay tuned…Barrett’s creativity seems boundless.
Claire Barrett’s “Southern Belladonna” opens Saturday, April 22 from 4-7p.m. at Location Gallery, 251 Bull Street, with gallery profits benefiting a local charity. Find out more at LocationGallery.net. Follow Barrett’s wedding Instagram @clairebarrettphoto; her wedding website is ClarieBarrett.com; and she can be contacted about workshops via TheFocusedFeast.com.
This article appears in Apr 1-30, 2023.