This series focuses on those who take the making of pictures a step or two further, creating their own photographic tools.
Brendan Barry, Devon, UK
While walking past his university’s fashion and textile department, Brendan Barry spotted a mannequin and thought, I could make a camera out of that. Barry has made cameras from all sorts of unusual materials from honey dew melon pinholes to lamps, to logs, and even loaves of bread. His interest is not in making the highest-quality camera, but in picking apart the preconceptions of what a camera might be and creating new ways of engaging people with photographic processes and techniques. The white, bald, armless, and slightly beat-up mannequin was just the type of unusual object that audiences would respond to.
The camera’s construction was simple: Barry drilled a hole in the left eye socket, sawed off the back of the head, and gaff taped a lens where the eye had been and fixed a 4x5 back to the head. The lens is a 210mm 5.6 multi coated Schneider Kreuznach lens. The focus is fixed as the mannequin’s head does not allow for movement in the front of back. The standard 4x5 back allows for the use of any 4x5 photo sensitive material from negatives, Polaroids, and paper. Barry’s first subject, a fellow faculty member, was photographed on a paper negative.
By using the mannequin as a portrait camera, the sitter is forced to stare into the mannequin’s left eye, which blinks back at them when making the exposure. This strange experience becomes performative as the sitter cannot help but personify the camera.
First test of Jeff, the photo technician at Exeter School of Art where I work. Shot on paper negative then contact printed to a positive.
View more of Barry’s work on his website and Instagram.
Have you made or modified your own photographic equipment? Let us know at info@donttakepictures.com