ROBERT BARRY: Dimensions

Robert Barry has had a passion for photography since the late 1960s, when he purchased a camera to photograph his first-born daughter. He quickly found that solely making family images did not satisfy his creative photographic appetite. From these early days, his interests and pursuits have mostly been in the photo treasure hunt. He loves to wander in and around cities, investigating and capturing images about how we build and decorate our environments. Robert finds beauty in things mundane to the majestic.

Robert received his Master of Arts degree from San Francisco State University in 1978. He is currently a Professor Emeritus of Photography at Palomar College in San Marcos, California, where his teaching career began in 1989. His photographs have been exhibited and collected internationally.

As a photographer, I am concerned with visual perception. I am interested in investigating the connection between how things appear in real life and the changes that occur in translating the location into a photographic image. I try to capture the essence of a place and give it a power, an importance, and hopefully create an emotional connection with the viewer.

Within the camera's frame and through the use of attributes like space, shape, scale, color, and viewpoint, I create relationships with the various components of the image. Photography is about the relationships of things. When you continually look at the world to find these relationships, your awareness of your environment increases. All of these considerations are puzzled together to form a cohesive unit where the subject is the whole—the sum of its parts.