Featured Photographer James Prochnik Featured Photographer James Prochnik

Cat Byrnes

Cat Byrnes is an artist whose photographs reflect a graceful, gentle, and generous stance towards the world she inhabits and explores.

Voltaire ended his novel, Candide, with the line, “We must tend to our garden”. In these words are a suggestion that whatever crisis is going on in the world at large it’s also imperative to care for and pay attention to the good in our immediate surroundings - things like family, friends, and community. These are the flowers and food that nourish our souls and enrich our hearts. In Cat Byrnes’s photographs, I sense something of a gardener tending with care and love to her city and her people - an expansive and sometimes wild garden whose ephemeral blooms of beauty and intensity she’s able to catch with her camera and share with all of us. I asked Cat to tell me more about her work:

I create photos to communicate. Like a latent voicebox, it symphonizes with everything I make. Over the years, as my perspective changes so does my work. There are times that I wish to remain still in the harmonious confines of myself. But life demands that I contend with the chaotic and fleeting passage of time. I believe my photography seeks to bridge the juxtaposition between these two seemingly disparate yet essential parts of the human condition. Street photography challenges me to stand apart from others to capture precious, fragile moments in time that are so fleeting they pass thoughtlessly through our hands like grains of sand. I am essentially apart with my viewfinder, yet never wholly so. 

The spontaneous compositions that fall right into place get me the most excited. I enjoy the process of capturing chaos unraveling in front of my eyes, it is a good reminder that you will never get exactly what you expected from a photo. Sometimes it is even better. For example, one of my favorite photos chosen for this newsletter was taken on my rooftop in Brooklyn. It was taken during the Black Lives Matter Marches in the Summer of 2020, at the peak of Covid. The mass of protestors cascaded through the city past Brooklyn and towards Manhattan. Onlookers watched their ascent with gregarious awe. Each of us stood upon our rooftops, a city of isolated archipelagos, while the protestors continued as a united current for the sake of societal change in the face of sickness and death. The composition mirrors the story perfectly. 

One of my main goals is to publish a photo book and have my first solo show. 

This upcoming spring I have two of my photos included in Pomegranate Press’s community group book, NOTHING LEFT BUT HEALING, a corresponding show will be held at Agony Books in Richmond, VA. 

Over the last few months, I have been working on a new painting series influenced by my past experiences with hiking, foraging, and gardening. These works depict wild landscapes and environments drawn with oil pastels on unprimed canvas. The main theme represents the push-pull duality between living in the city yet longing for nature. 

Cat Byrnes is a third-generation artist living in New York City. She received her BFA from Pace University in Photography and Painting with minors in Anthropology and Art History. She currently works at a film lab in Manhattan.

Follow Cat Byrnes on Instagram: @catbyrnes (photos) | @catbyrnesart (paintings).

Photo at top of post: Self portrait, New York City, 2021 © Cat Byrnes

↓ ↓ ↓ All Photos in this post © Cat Byrnes (@catbyrnes)↓ ↓ ↓

A color 'street photography' image in NYC. In the center of the composition a woman lost in thought looks down; her introspective moment flanked by walking women on either side of her, filling the frame of the image.

New York City, 2018 © Cat Byrnes

A group of five young women gather in a triangular grouping in front of vine covered old brick wall.

New York City, 2021 © Cat Byrnes

A low angle, looking up profile image of a young black man walking down a city street on a sunny winter day. His face is bathed in light and he appears lost in thought amidst the shadowed forms of the other pedestrians.

New York City, 2019 © Cat Byrnes

A color photograph, made from the roof of a Brooklyn apartment, that looks down at a group of Black Lives Matters protesters marching across the intersection half a block away. In the late day light of a summer afternoon.

Brooklyn, 2020 © Cat Byrnes

A photo of a yellow construction hose attached to a fire hyrdrant and propped up by a makeshift wooden collar. Although practical and construction work related, it looks like a modern art sculpture.

New York City, 2019 © Cat Byrnes

A color photograph of an older woman in a pink dress tends to a lush green late summer garden with four sunflowers that bloom far above her head.

Kingston, Pennsylvania, 2021 © Cat Byrnes

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