Brendan Barry
Brendan Barry is an Exeter-based photographer, educator and camera-maker. We ask him about his practice, his plans and how lockdown is facilitating some interesting experiments…
What do you do?
Essentially I’m a freelance photographer, educator and camera maker, but there’s basically three different ways that I work: as an artist (making and showing images); as an educator/facilitator (enabling others to make and show images); and as a producer (helping other people to help other people to make and show images). The boundaries between each are often blurred, but I’m quite happy with grey areas in this context and I enjoy how each feeds into the other. My work takes me into schools, universities, museums, galleries, community centres, sheds, skyscrapers, shipping containers; any space I can transform into a camera and/or darkroom, really.
Brendan in the darkroom
Who do you work with and why?
I work with all sorts of people, particularly with the community projects I set up and workshops I run: groups with special learning needs, hearing impairment, challenging behavioural issues and/or mental ill health; students, academics, enthusiasts, as well as other creative practitioners and members of the public. In these situations, I find and construct environments that allow me to intensify the social relationships and experiences of participants through engaging them with the photographic process. In this context, my approach shifts attention from artist as agent to artist as enabler of agency in others. So basically I facilitate others making stuff, and this is one of the most rewarding ways of working for me.
I often collaborate with other photographers and artists, too, and regularly take on students and assistants for specific projects, but within my own work as an artist it is usually just me beavering away over a tray of chemicals, rummaging in skips for materials or building something (often out of what I have found in the skips) in whatever space I can utilise as a workshop/studio/darkroom (currently it’s my shed!) and making images and videos with it all.
Talk us through a favourite project or piece.
The Shipping Container Community Camera Project I undertook in June 2019 in Northernhay Gardens is a good example of the way I often work. This involved the transformation of a shipping container into a giant camera with a built-in darkroom: a workable teaching space capable of producing ultra large traditional analogue photographic prints. The camera is wheelchair accessible, fully ventilated, solar powered and capable of accommodating large groups of all ages and abilities. It has a built-in print washing system, lens movements and a working mechanical shutter.
The Shipping Container Community Camera Project, Northernhay Gardens, June 2019.
On many of the days the camera was in operation, people from local charities, community groups and education centres participated in workshops in which we created paper negatives and then contact-printed these inside the container to produce a positive image. On other days, the camera was open to the public, offering the opportunity for people to experience traditional image-making processes for free. Then, the space was transformed into a gallery where all of the images made within it were exhibited.
The aim of the project was to work with a diverse range of people and invite them to make portraits of the community by the community. The resulting images collectively touched on themes of inclusion and collaboration, celebrated diversity, promoted acceptance, and inspired engagement and participation in the arts.
The project was Arts Council England funded and made possible with support from a variety of local and national partners including RAMM, Exeter Phoenix, The Photographers’ Gallery and Exeter College.
What keeps you going when things get tough?
I’m particularly interested in process and the use of the mechanics of photography as a tool for exploration and collaboration; the whole ‘the journey is the destination’ thing. I love solving problems, particularly practical ones, so embarking on a project not knowing how it will work out is exciting to me. And I am confident it will work out as I don't give any headspace to ‘if’ it will work out. It’s like if you come across a massive wall that you want to get to the other side of: you can bash your head against it hoping to break through (which will most likely just lead to a sore head and a broken wall); you can turn around and go back the way you came (which is basically like giving up); you can walk along hoping to find the end of it (which is relinquishing any element of responsibility and control as everything is left to chance); or you can start looking for things to make a ladder out of, which as far as I’m concerned is the quickest way to get over the thing.
I was asked recently when working on quite a big, high-stakes commission in New York if I was worried that something might go wrong. My response was that I was expecting things to go wrong, I was sure they would, and that is the most exciting bit as it means I get the opportunity to fix something or solve a problem (usually involving lots of gaffer tape, stuff pulled from skips and various reappropriated materials found lying around)!
So if I get stuck or find things get tough, I just crack on, trusting myself that I’ll figure it out along the way.
Name one thing that would make your life easier as an artist or arts organiser.
I suppose it has to be space. The problem with Exeter, unlike larger cities like Bristol, London, Manchester and so forth, is that it has no significant industrial past, so there are few old factories and warehouses ripe for conversion into artists’ studios, hubs, and galleries. We have plenty of ex-retail space, and organisations like Art Work Exeter, Topos and Maketank are doing fantastic work utilising these and making exciting things happen in and around the city centre, but a dedicated space for artist studios would, I think, contribute a lot to the arts in Exeter.
What’s been the best moment for you in the last year?
In May 2019, I transformed the 46th floor of a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan into a multi-lens camera obscura installation, creating ultra-large-format (45” x 93”) analogue prints of the New York skyline – believed to be the largest direct analogue photographs ever made of New York City! The images were created by using large rolls of photographic paper and developed in specially fabricated troughs to create giant paper negatives which were then contact printed into positive images using iPhone torches as makeshift rudimentary enlargers.
Turning a New York skyscraper into a camera obscura
To create the camera, I, with the assistance of group of students from Aperture Foundation and Red Hook Labs (two local foundations who work with young adults from underserved neighbourhoods in New York), had to initially black out a 27,000 sq. ft. skyscraper floor by covering up 160 windows. There were 20 students and a full film crew and production team of about another 20 people. I had to ship out a whole bunch of equipment, create a range of specially fabricated systems to allow a camera to operate at this scale, plumb in a print washing system to accommodate images of this size and build various components on site as the project developed, to solve all the problems/challenges that arose as we went. The sheer scale and ambition of that project definitely makes it a highlight of the last couple of years.
What does the next year look like for you?
Well, it was going to be doing more projects like the New York one… I had teamed up with a London-based charity called Positive View Foundation, who work with young adults from a number of boroughs around the city, and we were all set to access a skyscraper near Liverpool Street Station, transform a floor into a camera and photograph the London skyline with it, but that project is on hold for obvious reasons. So I’m focusing on developing some new work of my own. I’ve been getting into cymatics (the study of visible sound and vibration) and am exploring ways of incorporating that into how I present the imagery I produce. I’m researching making my own photo chemistry out of the raw chemical ingredients and at the same time becoming interested in exploring more environmentally friendly and sustainable ways of developing images. And I’m working on setting up an artist studio space (to help contribute to the solving of that problem!) and am in talks with various organisations about that, so fingers crossed!
I am also working with the Youth Panel at RAMM on a participatory photography project which will result in an exhibition in the museum when it reopens. I’m a huge fan of RAMM and feel that it’s one of the best things the city has to offer, and which we sometimes take for granted. (Shout out to the Phoenix, too, another one of my favourite places in Exeter!)
In August 2019, we ran the first Dartmoor Summer School of Photography, a week-long experimental photography residential taking place on the National Park. The week offered the opportunity for a group of visual artists to explore their relationship with photography with the guidance of a selection of renowned artists and photographers including Jem Southam, Susan Derges, Sian Davey, Sian Bonnell and Jason Evans. We’ve had to cancel this year’s School, again for obvious reasons, but I’ve started work on 2021’s event…
In what ways are you helping to put Exeter on the cultural map, nationally or internationally?
I’m pretty proud of the Summer School: we gained international recognition and had people attend from all over the world – America, New Zealand, Mexico, and various countries in Europe – and the feedback has been incredible.
I document my projects photographically and a number have had short films made about them – these all exist online or in print on various blogs, social media spaces, journals and magazines, and have cumulatively been seen or read by more than a million people, so hopefully this contributes in some way.
I also hope that a mixture of trying to make exciting things happen in and around the city, and trying to make exciting things happen out of the city but while I’m there telling anyone who’ll listen that I’m from a really cool place in Devon called Exeter and they should check it out might help a little bit!
What have you been doing during lockdown?
Apart from making new work of my own, I’ve been producing instructional video tutorials of various photographic processes I use, including one on turning your bedroom into a camera obscura (and taking photographs with it) and another on how to make homemade developer and fixer using household items. These have been really fun to make and it’s been really exciting and rewarding watching people follow them at home, produce their own results and share them with me online. I have also turned my shed into a camera and darkroom, and, with the support of a grant from Arts and Culture at the University of Exeter, Exeter Northcott Theatre, Exeter Phoenix, and Kaleider, I’ve made a short film about that.
I’ve been exploring cymatics, which so far has simply involved me upturning a speaker, placing a tray of water on it, pumping low frequency sound waves through it and filming it in slow motion to see what shapes it creates in the water! I’m getting some really cool results, so am excited to see where that takes me.
And I’ve been giving online one-to-one tutorials to people interested in camera making, analogue process development, running community projects and general random photography stuff. Education is often at the core of what I do, so it’s nice to be able to continue that. (Where would we all be without Zoom, eh?!)
What if ….?
…there was a double decker bus going spare?! I need one for a future camera/darkroom/studio/gallery/classroom community project I’m working, so if anyone could help out with that…
How do we find out more?
Visit my website / follow on Instagram / subscribe to the YouTube channel