I don't really remember getting into photography I think I just I just
remember always being into photography from like a really young age always
having a camera around my neck my dad gave me my first camera when I was maybe
11 10 11 it was an Olympus om 10 I used to have on a piece of balers twine
around my neck and just take it everywhere with me and yes i suppose i was just
always hooked. My name is Brendon Barry I'm a photographer and educator and I've aways enjoyed building things
I was lucky enough to be given the use of a studio space and my friends old
mill. 'Oh all right yeah just dragging myself out of my pit" We just come to
grab something at the studio and then we are hooking up the caravan and taking
her up the moors. 'Are you?' Yes. Right we'll catch you in bit.
and that was where I built, I suppose suppose the precursor to the caravan camera which was the shed
camera and that was where I kind of developed and tried out a lot of the proceses that i'm working with now
This was my old studio, it's falling apart a bit now
This was my first big camera so I could come in the back and have it all boarded here
so after building random cameras for a while I decided to build a caravan
camera it started with me just crawling through eBay looking for an old Caravan
I found one for 150 pounds just down the road from here so ripped out the insides
painted it black covered all the windows, cut a hole in the back of it, put a lens in.
Built a table for the chemical trays and we was good to go.
Okay so on the count of three hold nice and still
three two one. So the great thing about the caravan is its, it's a, it's a camera
obscura that very easily becomes a camera when you put light-sensitive
material in front of the lens. It's also a darkroom but also a teaching space as
well and then the outside world becomes the studio so when I take the caravan
out on location. People are often quite curious and they'll kind of wander over
and go like what is this? what's happening? and I invite them inside and
show them how it works. Sometimes you'll kind of spot someone or a group
of people that either maybe look kind of interesting and I want to make that
photograph or you can see them looking and maybe they're a little bit shy and
they won't approach so I quite often kind of go over to people and and just
sort of say oh you see that big Caravan over there that looks like a camera well
it is a camera do you want to come and have a look the reaction when people
come inside that's that's one of the things that's most rewarding for me and
most exciting when you bring people inside and you close the door and I'll
leave the lens cap down often and you're in this black space and then I'll open
up the lens and light pours through it so I get them to step back and bring up
the screen and the image from outside is projected in and it's that reaction if
you could bottle that I think that's something really special that and it
never gets boring even for me looking at every single time and put a screen and
outside its projected in like I never get bored and most exciting thing is
seeing other people experience that
how I started kind of creating making my own cameras I suppose I'd always kind of
had I always loved making things when I was a kid that I used to kind of take
apart toys and rebuild them and put to them and create kind of new ones with
them and I think that kind of just fed into my photography practice and then
yes ways I just started thinking about what other things you could make a
camera and then I realized that you can pretty much make a camera out of
anything
today we turned up at this abandoned old airport Watchtower and we have turned a
few of the rooms there into camera Obscura's which effectively is a big
dark space with the lens in it which lets light in and turns it into a camera
this is completely brand new I've never used a ready-made objects like cardboard
or anything before and it's really inspiring it makes you want to try and
use new things
left one to close as an educator it's sometimes quite tricky to explain to
students how they'll kind of mechanics of a camera work conceptually you're
trying to talk about aperture and shutter speed and for someone that's
never cutting the understanding of that before it's quite a lot to wrap your
head round bringing people inside the camera there's a really good teaching
space and a place to kind of explain to people the mechanics of photography in
an in a clearer way we've been experimenting with very surreal and
bizarre portraits incorporating elements of still life and snap using all the
objects that are found around around this area hoping to sort of minimize how
much we're bringing into the scene just using what's here and hoping we'll come
up with something interesting
every place brings its own ideas and brings its own like inspiration to
things to learn from and things to take from what's around us I think they even
though this place is kind of old and tattered it feels like we can still use
it for a lot of good
you know people often ask like why have you made a camera out of a pineapple for
instance I suppose the short answer is because you can but actually what it
kind of opens up and allows is the possibilities of what a camera is and
how long can be made there's an element of humor to it
obviously the reaction that I had from people of the cameras that I was making
was a lot more kind of engaged and excited people kind of responded in it
in a very different way and what's kind of nice about that as well as that you
know when people were like oh my god this is amazing you're like yeah well
you can do this at home in your bedroom you know blackout put the curtains shut
put some gaffer tape around the edges and you're wearing glasses pop out that
lens cut a little hole in the curtains make sure your mum or dad doesn't mind
and then hold up a piece of card or something behind it and and you've
created your own camera obscura you know and sometimes it's good to just have a
bit of fun with this but it's not take it all too seriously and you know make a
camera out of watermelon and see what happens