Mike Byrne
Freelance Photographer/Exchange Student
Where are you from?
I’m from Scotland but spent much of the past two years travelling. I worked in India for four months in 2008 and during the summer I worked in East Africa.
What were you doing there?
I volunteered for HIV/AIDS organizations shooting documentary assignments. I was shooting a lot of portraits as well as traditional photojournalism. In India I was mostly working with the sex worker community as they are the high-risk demographic. I was lucky enough to be invited to visit them at their homes in the slums. It was great to be able to photograph them in their homes, meet their families and see how they lived.
How’d you get into photography?
I started out studying engineering in an attempt to follow in my father’s footsteps, it didn’t work out for me. Then I switched to business studies in order to try and find some sort of career. Eventually I realized that I didn’t want to go into the corporate world but the skills that I learned there helped me with setting up my own business. I finally took the big leap to try and make my photography hobby into a career. I was working for a music magazine for a few years and that really tuned my skills but I needed to refine things a lot more in order to work professionally. I started by taking a photography foundation class at a local community college. After one year there I applied and was accepted into Edinburgh Napier University’s BA Photography & Film course. I haven’t looked back since.
Why did you decided to come to Richmond?
My university offered the exchange program; it was either Richmond or somewhere in Canada. My family has a lot of history in the US so I chose Richmond. One thing that I have learned since starting out in photography is that you have to take every opportunity that comes your way. There is a lot of competition out there and to make yourself known you have to get out there and challenged yourself.
Tell me about the photography you’ve been doing here?
The portrait series that you’re featuring is for my Advanced Studio class. I wanted to take advantage of my perspective as an outsider looking in on American culture. I wanted to make a series that might visually define the average American. I soon realized that no such average person actually exists, or if they do it would be difficult to find them. But by creating a portrait collection of as many people as I could get into the studio, then maybe some commonalties might become apparent. I was inspired by the work of German photographer August Sander and the studio techniques of the late Irving Penn. In the early 20th Century Sander created a large collection of portraits that featured an entire cross section of German society. That collection now exists as a historical document of how people looked at the time that the photographs were taken, visually defining the culture of the time. I adapted this idea and decided to go about it in a more contemporary way, Penn’s approach to taking portraits helped me in that respect. Unfortunately the logistics of finding and photographing a cross section of society in one semester has proved to be too much but the images that I have collected feature a group of my peers.
Mike’s links:
http://www.faction.co.uk/ (personal website)
http://mikebyrne.co.uk/ (photography from india)
Mike will be holding an open studio session on Thursday December 3rd in Room 209, Pollak Building on VCU Campus (10am-5pm). If you would like to feature in the series please contact Mike with a time that you will be available. mike@faction.co.uk
