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Brendan Bannon: you know for a long time, because I wasn't formally taught photography, and because I did discover a lot of
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Brendan Bannon: the stuff on my own
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Brendan Bannon: and I imagine people who are formally taught. I don't know, because I haven't had that experience, but I imagine people who are formally taught are also discovering shit on their own now.
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Brendan Bannon: And you know, probably even more so have to do that, because
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Brendan Bannon: you know what photography is is a lot bigger than what's handed to you in a classroom or through a single set of experiences. so you know, I mean, I think at that time when I started
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Brendan Bannon: I was actually encouraged.
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Brendan Bannon: you know, I I wanted to be able to to do some trips and projects. So I I started early on. I started a kind of special projects
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Brendan Bannon: Print club
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Brendan Bannon: and I would ask
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Brendan Bannon: people to pre-purchase some prints from whatever trip I was going on, so to kind of invest in the project
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Brendan Bannon: as my self-styled early version of what Kickstarter became, but was based on art historical awareness of something similar that ran
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Brendan Bannon: in the twenties and thirtys. And there was a Buffalo Print Club. There were other part clubs where people would kind of buy a subscription to a an artist's output
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Brendan Bannon: And so, you know. Among the early collaborators there are people who help make those projects possible. So a bunch of house painters and plumbers and
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Brendan Bannon: neighborhood friends who are like, yeah, all right, we'll throw down, you know, 50 bucks or a hundred bucks
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Brendan Bannon: for you to to go and do this and bring it back and show it to us.
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Brendan Bannon: you know, I think My mom, in a sense, was a big collaborator because she was still alive and
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Brendan Bannon: She had entered nursing care, and basically said, You know, look, you've been here.
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Brendan Bannon: It's your turn now. I want to see what you can do. Go out and
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Brendan Bannon: see the world and bring it back and show it to me, like, you know. Don't get lost on your journey. Come back because I'll be waiting.
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Brendan Bannon: but don't postpone your journey for me, because I'm in a nursing home now, and somebody else can take care of me, and you know you were here. So now go there and show me what it's like.
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Brendan Bannon: So you know, that was a kind of collaborative force that I have to recognize.
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Brendan Bannon: you know. I think when I started printing I was printing a campus, and you were working behind the counter, and
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Brendan Bannon: you know you were a huge catalyst to
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Brendan Bannon: me, thinking about myself as a photographer and not as a house painter.
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Brendan Bannon: you know. I remember, and I tell the story often about how
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Brendan Bannon: you know you. You offered me an exhibit, and I was like, no, you got the wrong fucking, Brendan, and I don't know what you talk about.
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Brendan Bannon: I'm a house painter, not a photographer.
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Brendan Bannon: and you like, show me the invite that you would put together. Still, at the end was like, Oh, well, too bad for you, because 500 of these went out today. And you're gonna have a show whether you have something on the wall or not. like me to be that bossy ever And you were right, you know, because there was a lot of
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Brendan Bannon: resistance. You know I described that
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Brendan Bannon: great wall that I thought existed around, you know, and I
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Brendan Bannon: even as I had snuck my way in. you know, as a house painter like
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Brendan Bannon: I wasn't sure that I belonged there. And you know the the secret is, there's no there like
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Brendan Bannon: That's the real secret that nobody really wants to tell you is that
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Brendan Bannon: you know the photography world
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Brendan Bannon: doesn't exist.
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Brendan Bannon: they're bigments of it all over the place. There clicks and groups and ways that people define themselves as photographers. But you know there is no monolithic
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Brendan Bannon: world photography world.
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Brendan Bannon: that you need an invite to get into
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Brendan Bannon: But I think I needed. You know I needed that push or that pull from you to be like, all right. Well.
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shit!
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Brendan Bannon: That would be really humiliating if there was a show, and the walls were empty.
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amy caterina: Do you know.
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Brendan Bannon: you remember what was on the postcard?
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Brendan Bannon: Yeah, me and my dog Henry?
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Brendan Bannon: which was also funny, because, you know, I like to be stopped walking on. On what avenue! I remember being stopped by some crazy guy in a pick up truck.
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Brendan Bannon: Who like slammed on the brakes, and he was like, Hey, it's you! It's you! And I was like, Oh, shit like you know what happened that like when I sleep with his wife, or something like this guy's all fired up like.
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Brendan Bannon: you know, he's pointing, and you know. But he was happy to see me. So I figure it wasn't that And he comes running out with the postcard. He's like
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Brendan Bannon: he's like. I didn't know that.
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Brendan Bannon: I know exactly how that feels. And I was like, oh, that's great, like, you know. So you just
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Brendan Bannon: there's this great kind of you know. It's like you're putting a call out, and you don't know if anybody hears it, and sometimes you find out
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Brendan Bannon: that they heard it, and it changed their life, for you know that's been on the road with them for a really long period of time, and
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Brendan Bannon: it's pretty neat.
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Brendan Bannon: you know, that's kind of one of the experiences
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Brendan Bannon: of of photography that is
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Brendan Bannon: a gift for kind of venturing out and being creative like that.
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Brendan Bannon: you know other things kind of kind of happened. one of the oh, so
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Brendan Bannon: you know I I I can't. I can't
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Brendan Bannon: move past that story without bringing up Chris Bush over who was a printer
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Brendan Bannon: at Campus, who also took an interest in in what I was doing. And you know, I also can't imagine how odd it must have been like, you know, for somebody who
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Brendan Bannon: didn't have a history with photography. You didn't have a training with photography to just show up, and
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Brendan Bannon: the kind of hub of photography like. you know, producing studied like
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Brendan Bannon: thoughtful
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Brendan Bannon: exploratory images like I was doing
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Brendan Bannon: true like
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amy caterina: that to me. It makes sense.
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Brendan Bannon: yeah. So
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Brendan Bannon: you know all that stuff.
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Brendan Bannon: all that stuff was happening. You gave me the show, and I was like, All right. Well, I I don't know how to print an exhibit like I couldn't really figure out how to make an easel straight?
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Brendan Bannon: But Chris could, and I was like, do
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Brendan Bannon: like. Can I hire you to come in and print with me? And eventually, like, you know, he, he agreed, and
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Brendan Bannon: he printed side by side with me. So I was, like, you know, working at the earliest stages with a master printer. And
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Brendan Bannon: you. you'd look at the negatives I had, and look at the things I was doing, and be like. You can't do this. I like what it is always kind of
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Brendan Bannon: chippy and be like it's against the rules, I mean. I remember running joke with him like. well, I don't know the rules, you know, so you can't hold me responsible for breaking up
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Brendan Bannon: But there was, you know, for me at that point. That was a lot of the fun was like.
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Brendan Bannon: you know, I didn't know the rules. I wasn't really interested in learning them. I wanted to hold on to the idea that there were no rules. but I also wanted to learn how to do work at the highest level.
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Brendan Bannon: and I didn't think rules made the highest level the highest level. I thought aesthetic. social, personal.
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Brendan Bannon: you know,
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Brendan Bannon: inputs into the work, or what gave it that value? you know. So
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Brendan Bannon: and if I had to look for the rules.
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Brendan Bannon: I would have stopped doing photography way earlier. So you know, when I teach now or when I start a collaborative project in a community. I'm like. it's one of the secrets, then photography. There are no rules.
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Brendan Bannon: a couple of principles I'd like you to follow as we work together.
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Brendan Bannon: you know, and you're free to even throw those principles out down the line. But I think you'll find them useful.
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Brendan Bannon: is, you know, respect yourself respect the process
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Brendan Bannon: and respect people. You photograph
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Brendan Bannon: and if those are your guiding principles, you know this will be fun.
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Brendan Bannon: meaningful, and you know probably a surprisingly constructive activity for you to take part in.
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Brendan Bannon: yeah. So you know, after that, like.
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Brendan Bannon: I could really look through the years and find, you know all kinds of different people who.
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Brendan Bannon: you know, mentored or pulled me in closer, or
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Brendan Bannon: offered an opportunity. That
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Brendan Bannon: you know, that was ended up being transformational.
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Brendan Bannon: you know that like that just continued to happen.
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Brendan Bannon: and usually and thankfully, it was often people seeing
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Brendan Bannon: seeing that I was ready.
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Brendan Bannon: you know, before I thought I was ready.
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Brendan Bannon: You know their respect for the process and respect for the masters, and I think some of the sense of like
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Brendan Bannon: you know what those walls were if I look back at them, was just an aw, at
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Brendan Bannon: what photography, at the highest levels of
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Brendan Bannon: articulation could could offer, you know, and
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Brendan Bannon: so it maybe wasn't
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Brendan Bannon: a wall that was there to keep me on a photography. Maybe it was you know a wall that was inviting me to climate, and I needed to figure that out.
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Brendan Bannon: and you know I needed to to
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Brendan Bannon: work consistently, to try and get to that level. And so I think my collaborations, which are.
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Brendan Bannon: you know, largely kind of
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Brendan Bannon: some are based around teaching. And I'm powering other people to photograph somewhere about. you know, hearing other people's curiosities and supporting a way for them to
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Brendan Bannon: to get there. Some of it's just about.
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Brendan Bannon: you know, throwing
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Brendan Bannon: thrown things at the wall and seeing what sticks. but it's also kind of
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Brendan Bannon: part of it is just working to be attentive to what?
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Brendan Bannon: To where people
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Brendan Bannon: maybe going because it was for the things that were helpful to me. being attentive to
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Brendan Bannon: creating
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Brendan Bannon: symbols of success for our accomplishment for people to see like.
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Brendan Bannon: okay. You know, I mean, there are these moments where I felt like I had arrived like I did a job for Unicef. And I was like I was a kid collecting pennies for Unicef. And
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Brendan Bannon: now I'm carrying a camera around photographing for them like that was a a cool kind of moment. You know my mother was a Ukrainian refugee, and my extended family on her side, immediate and extended, or all Ukrainian refugees.
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Brendan Bannon: and so, when I had an opportunity to photograph
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Brendan Bannon: in Africa for the UN High Commission for refugees. That was another kind of moment where it was like, oh, you know what like I'm connected.
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Brendan Bannon: and some way to the story.
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Brendan Bannon: because.
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Brendan Bannon: you know, I'm here on earth because my
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Brendan Bannon: family fled from Stalin's purges in Ukraine.
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Brendan Bannon: And
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Brendan Bannon: you know, so that that experience of of
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Brendan Bannon: being the son of refugees, and existing because
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Brendan Bannon: of the circumstances of war, which is probably why most of us exist. anyway, at least in some point of our historical and DNA trajectory like
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Brendan Bannon: we can all trace our lives back to some shit that happened in war somewhere along the way.
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Brendan Bannon: and you know either the courageous or or
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Brendan Bannon: calamitous response you know, to to those circumstances like
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Brendan Bannon: and that, you know, for some of us
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Brendan Bannon: those
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Brendan Bannon: generative moments are within
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Brendan Bannon: recent memory, you know, or within the historical record for others. you know, maybe the
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Brendan Bannon: the circumstances of of their creation. Go back generations and her, you know.
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Brendan Bannon: born that way. before things were recorded for them. but finding myself.
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Brendan Bannon: we opportunity first to photograph and then to teach refugee youth and to tell the stories of what they were going through and how war had shaped their their lives immediately.