Brendan Barry

Teaches at 92nd Street Y

Brendan Barry is a photographer, educator and camera builder whose creative photographic practice combines elements of construction, education, performance and participation. 

Fascinated by the mechanics of vision and the processes of analogue photography, his work is concerned with the transformation of different objects and environments into spaces capable of viewing and making a photographic image. The process and materiality of photography – the action of light through a lens, the heightened awareness of the world brought about by being inside a camera obscura and the magical moment of transformation when the image is registered on photo-sensitive paper – is central to this practice as both a personal experience and the means by which he engages others in forms of collaboration and exploration. Resisting the idea of the photographer as ‘someone who goes around capturing images of people and places’, his work often shifts attention ‘from artist as agent, to artist as enabler of agency in others’.

Brendan is founder & director of Positive Light Projects, a not for profit organization using the visual arts to engage and inspire a diverse range of audiences and communities as well as developing emerging artists and aiding them move their practise forward in exciting and innovative ways.