© Courtesy of the artist

Watch, Listen, Read

Instagram Takeover: Laylah Amatullah Barrayn

Brighton Photo Biennial, The Dandy Lion Project contributor, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, takes over our Instagram account in the lead up to the festival.

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Laylah Amatullah Barrayn is a documentary photographer based in New York City. The Lucie Foundation included Barrayn on the Shortlist for the 2016 “Photo Taken” Emerging Photographer Prize.

Her work as been supported with grants from Columbia University’s IRAAS and the Research Foundation of the CUNY. She is a three-time recipient of the Community Arts Grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council. BRIC Arts selected her as a 2015 Media Arts Fellow where she produced her first experimental short, “Sunu Fall.” Her work has been published in the The Washington Post, The New York Times.

Greetings! It's @LaylahB back for day 3 of my #instagramtakeover! Mama Casset was a pioneering #Senegalese studio photographer. His portraits were often beautifully unique in the sense of composition and unconventional body language. Many #Dakarois utilized his Medina-based studio, “African Photo,” to capture the essence of themselves as well as their families.Unfortunately, most of his work was destroyed in a fire. In this picture, Senegalese #photographer and archivist Ibrahima Thiam holds an original print with raised stamp likely made in the ‘60s. There are only just a few hundred original images around today of Mama Casset’s work. Publishers like Revue Noire have compiled some of those images in books and magazines. #photography #studiophotography #vintage #portraiture #portraits #documentary #Dakar #Senegal #WestAfrica #instagood #instadaily #potd

A photo posted by Photoworks (@photoworks_uk) on

Her latest project on the Baye Fall sufi order of Senegal was exhibited at Galleria Biagiottie in Florence, Italy and at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), New York in 2015. She is currently an artist-in-residence at the Waaw Center for Art and Design in Saint-Louis, Senegal.

Hi all! This is @LaylahB and I'm back for day 2 of my #instagramtakeover! Much of my work utilizes documentary photography to engage various communities of the African diaspora on how identity is expressed collectively and as individuals. Young Afro-Emirati men perform what is known as the Raqqs Al Ayyalah or the stick/camel dance. It is one of the many folk dances of the Arabian peninsula. This particular dance is usually done by two contending groups, musicians are situated in the middle playing the duff drum, an instrument similar to the tambourine, and school-aged girls cheer them on by whirling their floor-length hair in the air. #BPB16 #LaylahAmatullahBarrayn #thedandylionproject #Arabia #Africa #UAE #dance #global

A photo posted by Photoworks (@photoworks_uk) on

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