Portrait and place photographer asking important questions

Barry Falk explores a range of issues via his photography, relating to science, places and the self. He’s documented institutes at the forefront of scientific research, asking what it means to be sentient, conscious and human (1, 2), as well as investigated the town of Kauniainen, in search of why Finland ranks so highly in global happiness.

Worthing-based Barry also focuses extensively on Eastern Europe. He thoughtfully considers his own Jewish identity: the featured photo above is of an elderly Jewish man – a Holocaust survivor – from a village near Zvenyhorodka, Ukraine. It’s from Barry’s ‘In Search of Amnesia’ (2019) series, which is concerned with memory. How do we remember the past, it asks, and how is the past re-interpreted when telling history – or buried by collective amnesia? Specifically, ‘In Search of Amnesia’ focuses on how Jewish memory is held within places that suffered atrocity and immense loss.

Barry is a member of the MAP6 Collective: a group of eight photographers who create collective photographic impressions of different places through their landscapes and people.

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