Going Rogue

I ride a motorcycle. I wear a mask and helmet. I wear a face shied. I am a photographer. I do some work at home. But not all of it. I wear medical gloves when I get gas. Throw the gloves away. A New York Times reader called me incredibly…

Gutted In Beds of Ice

the aproned butchers/ swung their clevers down/ on fresh cold joints/ slapping the thick chops/ and tossing them roughly/ tied/ to the boot delivery boys/ smelling of earth and morning/ wide bellied buttfuck/ clotted damply of black loam/ wrenched from gardens the smell/ of gardens a thunder on the rails/…

DeeplyEmbeddedWithAntifa

It is the end of an era. And the beginning of a new era. Now, we will be teaming up with the boys – city to city, riot to riot, protest to protest. Writing. Taking pictures. Bearing witness. To whatever is coming next. Evolve or die. It’s All Eve’s Hallo.…

U Can Write An Entire Sex Scene Just About the Eyes

so this morning, he turns over in his wondering where he is, and just before it all comes back to him, to face me with his bedroom eyes, and i am, as always, taking his photograph/ he rolls his eyes/ he asks if there is anything about me that has…

WHAT DOES THE PHOTOGRAPHER OWE THE DEAD

I have been taking photographs for sixty years. It’s a blur. During that time, some of the people I have taken pictures of have died. Car crashes. Suicide. AIDS. Cancer. Covid. Cardiac arrest. The list goes on. Some of the photographs of these people were taken while they were children.…

pushing inside you

i would push you up against the tree/ you asked me to please push you up against the tree/ especially in the sodden rain/ you were like a watermark/ all the delicate debris of life/ the smell of your shit and sweat/ the weather never really mattered/ your insides were…

Some Photographs Pull Me In

Even in some of my older photographs, if I look at them, they grab me – again – roughly, and I’m back again. With them. With them. https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

already patching memories

like a roof that leaks fixed with duck tape and bones spinning and dripping and waiting for the test results/

And We Have Met Ourselves

Tim Barrus: The New York Times I took this photograph with a GoPro from a New York City fire escape where I was living. In a place they call the rabbit hole. I have explored and lived in holes most of my life. And I am here to tell you…

rendering the very substance

I prefer the photographic eye to travel along a more sensual and emotionally intelligent path versus one that is telling me what has been constructed. I will decide what has been constructed and whether or not it has any insight or worth. To me.

Physics of Photography

The physics of photography extend to more than just what light does or what light is made of. Photography is a time machine through which travel is the necessary optic. Photos tell stories that have to do with time as we see it in a linear way, when time is…

What the Selfie Really Is

The selfie is just another tool in the repertoir of mating behavior that reminds the person who is the subject of the selfie that they are real. A selfie is a take on verisimilitude in that the subject understands that this image is of him and yet there’s more where…

Your Hand is Speaking to the Sun

https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

what subservience demands

asylum/ we seek asylum/ this strange life keeps peeling from our sin/ our fall from grace, our searching for asylum as an act of war/ the sea and suffering/ our only poetry speaks of resistance to whatever subservience demands/ https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

where nothing moves to chase the sea

the only noise from him is an almost breathing/ an almost punishing sunlight swarming/ where nothing moves to chase the sea/ https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

a quiet emptiness

the rut of emptiness up to the broken hills/ ravages without variety amid the timid spilling of the stars at night/ clicking with the crickets all the sad way to a parking lot/ https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

Dying Alone

his wings in the jagged glass shadows have been clipped hideously/ they say sedation is this empty vacuum where you are not conscious/ this is a lie/ get used to it/ they’re going to lie to you and force feed you murmuring the dark selves songs/ curling discontent, you hear,…

Dorm

i would sit in the dormroom chair, it was not comfortable/ watching you masturbate/ we never talked about it/ we avoided it/ never exloring our own roles and participation in it/ that fire sale was not extinguished/ i no longer sit in the dormroom chair watching you masturbate/ sometimes, we…

Quarantined Boys

#Does that mean sex, too.” #Sex, too,” I explained. “It’s just another virus, not at all unlike the one you have.” There was a long silence among the boys. One disease could take more than we thought we could handle. Two was an abstraction. We do get out at night.…

Appalachia Town

U Better Run

poverty porn like lunar silences i only take the photographs/ it’s a grave thing, to take a place, to objectify it/ our sovereign sleeping leaves no cum stains on the sheets/ you get to comfort yourself with the understanding there is a beauty to the thing/ i have seen appalachia…

Appalachian General

the appalchian sky made cheap as if standstill was attracted to a fading sun and the miles of parking lots scattered once again like the dead chain of emptying pilgrim souls who have arrived in the lower reaches of the hollows from the civilized east burning wood for warmth https://twitter.com/timbarrus

Rogue Photographer

Timothée Barrus Photography timotheebarrus#gmail.com

gas and groceries

this is where we used to go to buy groceries like beef jerky on the gas credit card https://twitter.com/timbarrus

ferris wheel of rust

we were insomniacs who played on an abandoned ferris wheel whose pendulum in appalachian rain was one blind eye and sullen just like you and weary where your skin leaked raw and your bones in the dark were soup inside your nerves to be so high such as we were…