Hailing from France, Martine Barrat got her start as a dancer working with Pink Floyd and Soft Machine. After travelling to Edinburgh for the International Dance Festival, she met Ellen Stewarr – director of La MaMa Experimental Theater on New York’s Lower East Side.
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“She offered me a ticket to come to the city, with my son, to dance with her company,” Barrat recalls. In June 1968, she arrived and made the city her home, settling into Harlem before moving to the South Bronx during the height of white flight.
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With a group of jazz musicians, Barrat co-created the Human Arts Ensemble – a collective working with children staging street performances and running video and music workshops.
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“I wasn’t trying to be a photographer,” Barrat says. “Two incredible philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari gave me a video camera saying we should document the events we were creating at La Mama every day with the kids from all over the city. This, I loved.”
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