NOLAN SMOCK

Barden’s Lot (2022) is the result of three days spent looking through the 15,000 negatives Albert Barden left to NC State Archives after his death in 1943. The largest and most popular collection in the archive, it spans fifty years from the early 1900s to the mid-century, documenting Raleigh, NC and surrounding areas almost indiscriminately, depicting everything from private events to large corporations to public works.

Taking detours and making connections through what largely seem to be outtakes, the photos that went unused, Barden’s Lot isn’t an attempt to tell any narrative but a reflection on mortality, a reckoning with the history of photography, the nature of work, the weight of what’s left after a life spent making pictures, and an often uneasy visual history of the state of North Carolina.

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