Bryan Locke

Lives and works in New York, NY, USA

Artist statement

I work in oral history and loosely staged photography, setting the scene but allowing it to breathe as it unfolds. Using a large format view camera and lights I construct narrative tableaux, landscapes, and still lifes inspired by excerpts from individual interviews. These excerpts could be a specific story, emotional arc, or the atmospheric tenor of a space. The process is collaborative on both fronts, within the interview and in the creation of the resulting image, though I ultimately make the final choices concerning the image. The work is about how people verbally express identity, and my visual interpretation of their articulated identity. This process calls attention to the ways in which memory, language, and environment shape how identity is constructed, seen, and understood.

Artwork