Barney's photographs of Joan - always direct, always telling, but never sentimental -give us a very personal record and insight into their relationship. His background as a photographer dates back to his enlistment in the infantry in 1944 and from there he was transferred to the photographic division of the Signal Corps, sent to China, and put in charge of a still photo and motion picture unit. The photographs that he took there, which record both the beauty and the misery, still hang on the wall of his loft to this day.

The photographs of Joan - especially the nudes - penetrate to the very depths of her being, capturing somehow her passion, her sensuality, and her lust for life. Barney's photographs also bear witness to that knowing, waiting void that was always at the center of her being and which relentlessly threatened the forms that were trying to emerge from the very center of her paintings.

The earliest photographs are taken in their hometown of Chicago, and in the apartment they shared at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge in the 1940s. It was in this apartment that Barney took the classical and hauntingly beautiful nude photographs of Joan.

Most of the photographs have never been seen, none have ever been exhibited, but they speak from the heart as photographs taken for purely personal reasons so often do and give us a special and intimate view of the immeasurable force of love.