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Brendan Bannon:  I think when I when I started photographing

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Brendan Bannon: you know to a large extent. I thought of photography as

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Brendan Bannon:  this

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Brendan Bannon: practice or place, or thing that had a big wall around it.

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Brendan Bannon:  And because I could perceive that wall, you know whether it was a wall that was built of access or built of class, or built of

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Brendan Bannon: you know, built from the prohibitive expense of photography in the late eighties and early nineties.

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Brendan Bannon: It was a wall that I kind of

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Brendan Bannon: I that I felt like I recognized, and that I felt like, you know, I I just needed to honor that wall and

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Brendan Bannon:  I spent a bunch of time waiting to be invited over the wall.

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Brendan Bannon: And

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Brendan Bannon: you know that invitation didn't come. and I recognize that early when I took my first stab at being a photographer

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Brendan Bannon: in my early twenties.

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Brendan Bannon:  After some friends of mine died in car accidents, and I've hit a kind of period of clinical depression. I was like, all right, like

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Brendan Bannon: you know. What

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Brendan Bannon: what I want to do is I want to stop time, you know, and I've always wanted to photograph, and time is pressing up against me.

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Brendan Bannon: And I'm going to, you know, just claim that thing that I'm interested in

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Brendan Bannon: And it's photography. So

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Brendan Bannon: I'm going to make that mine. I'm going to use the camera to stop time. I'm going to use camera to record these relationships.

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Brendan Bannon: and if I had done more of that I would have had more

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Brendan Bannon: more relics of those really important early relationships. that ended too soon. because people die.

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Brendan Bannon:  So

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Brendan Bannon: I put the camera down, you know, shortly after I picked it up to take care of my mom, who had multiple cirrhosis. And

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Brendan Bannon: yeah, there's about 8 years of super intense

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Brendan Bannon: caregiving where I was, the sole caregiver for her as she

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Brendan Bannon:  struggled with overcoming the challenges of dealing with a chronic illness.

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Brendan Bannon: and certainly met them, you know, courageously and head-on in a lot of ways.

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Brendan Bannon: And there was an education for me, and that you know I, a lot of people saw somebody who was suffering, and I saw somebody

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Brendan Bannon: who, on a daily basis was like.

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Brendan Bannon: you know, teaching life lessons and survival and courage and determination. ferocity, strength, And I was like, well, I have a front row seat to the greatest show on earth, and people are like, how do you deal with all that suffering? And it was like, What are you talking about?

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Brendan Bannon:  but you know, eventually the front row seat, And all the work that came with with holding on in the front row seat

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Brendan Bannon: ended up with exhaustion and depression. I started photographing shortly after.

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Brendan Bannon:  you know, realizing that I needed to do something to work through this period of chronic depression.

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Brendan Bannon: At the time I had no idea what something meant. and I didn't even know what I was interested in anymore. Because I've been painting houses and taking care of my mom for almost a decade in my twenties, when

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Brendan Bannon: you know every many of the other people that I knew were answering

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Brendan Bannon: to their curiosities or making plans. You know my ability to plan

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Brendan Bannon: had long since disappeared. and I just had to do and be and react

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Brendan Bannon: And

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Brendan Bannon: eventually I remembered that I wanted to photograph and that's what I started to do. So

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Brendan Bannon:  you know, I started

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Brendan Bannon: just playing with photography instead of trying to make a living from it or make a statement with it. It was like

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Brendan Bannon: the camera is gonna be my passport, you know, that's gonna open

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Brendan Bannon: the gates to whatever I'm curious about. And that's how I created it

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Brendan Bannon: for the first year, 2 years that I was photographing

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Brendan Bannon: and I would develop excuses to photograph for reasons or trips to photograph outings to photograph. But I would also just keep a camera in my pocket and use that. You know, when I saw something that

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Brendan Bannon: that resonated with me, that I wanted to acknowledge and record.

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Brendan Bannon: and

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Brendan Bannon: I think you know the impulse to  to collaborate.

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Brendan Bannon:  came with the recognition

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Brendan Bannon: that I had. that the the kind of wall that I perceived around photography wasn't real. It was an artifact, you know. It was an artifact of

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Brendan Bannon: classes on it was an artifact of

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Brendan Bannon:  a whole variety of of experiences that said to me, You know this isn't yours. And camping yours.

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Brendan Bannon: Oh.

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Brendan Bannon: but I found that it was. You know it wasn't a wall. There was more of a permeable membrane, and I was in the other side of it. I was somehow like in photography, whatever the hell that meant.

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Brendan Bannon:  and I think the the urge to collaborate was always the urge to just share that secret like.

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Brendan Bannon: it's not a wall. guys that's not a wall. There's no wall around this. There's no wall that says you can't be curious. because, remember.

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Brendan Bannon: photography for me was a way to unleash and activate and engage in my curiosities.

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Brendan Bannon: it was a passport like literally to other countries. figuratively, to other worlds,

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Brendan Bannon: metaphorically, to myself like.

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Brendan Bannon: And you know, when I discover that I couldn't keep that shit a secret, it was like.

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Brendan Bannon: all right. You know what other people need to know that there's no wall around this, that it's like. you know. In fact, it's the opposite of a wall.

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Brendan Bannon: It's a tool for engagement. and so I always made it

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Brendan Bannon: part of the work that I do.

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Brendan Bannon:  you know, as I, as I developed a a career, found opportunities to do documentary photography work.

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Brendan Bannon:  teaching was always braided into that practice, you know. So if I was going to be, I was interested in the slums in Kenya. And so I took on a few mentors, Mentees apprentice photographers

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Brendan Bannon: in Choragocho. And if I was going to photograph in Corgo, I was, gonna have.

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Brendan Bannon: you know.

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Brendan Bannon: 2, 3 young teenagers 20 year old youth like

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Brendan Bannon: who had expressed an interest. and

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Brendan Bannon: and I wanted, you know, to be able to to mentor them. And photography because they were like, hey, how did you do this? And I was like, Hey, there's no

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Brendan Bannon: there's no wall.

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Brendan Bannon: it's like you got to invite yourself in.

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Brendan Bannon: Yeah, walk in, and the camera will help you get wherever you want to go. And so you know those those early projects where I wanted to kind of share and invite others

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Brendan Bannon: into photography, but also into the.

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Brendan Bannon: you know, into the the realm of their own activated curiosities was really what drove

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Brendan Bannon: the early collaborations that I did.