Brooklyn-based photographer Rachel Barrett (MFA 2008 Photography, Video and Related Media) was recently chosen to receive the 2011 Tracey Baran Award. The $5,000 grant, established to honor the memory of SVA alumnus Tracey Baran (BFA 1997 Photography), is awarded annually to an emerging American female photographer by the BFA Photography Department and the Estate of Tracey Baran. Art critic Barry Schwabsky said of Baran, “From the moment I first saw Tracey Baran’s work, back in 1998, it’s haunted me…  I wondered how someone so young could look at things so knowingly.” The Tracey Baran Memorial Auction, which featured the work of alumni, faculty and friends of SVA, was held in 2009 to help establish the award to celebrate Baran’s life and photographic work.

Rachel Barrett was selected from over 400 applicants for the award, which was juried by photographer Carrie Levy, artist George Perkins and gallerist Leslie Tonkonow of Leslie Tonkonow Artworks+Projects. Barrett describes her work as deeply rooted in nostalgia, memory and identity and that for her, it functions as a means to “to collect the present and preserve the past.” One of PDN magazine’s 30 New and Emerging Photographers To Watch in 2011 and a 2010 Tierney Fellow, Barrett has been honored at several recent photography competitions, including the 2011 Prix de la Photographie Paris and the 2011 International Photography Festival in Lishui, China.

For more information on the award, visit traceybaranaward.org.

Image: Rachel Barrett, Permanence of the Past, from the series Josiah’s Farm, 2010.