Festival Site Operations Manager
Keavy Handley-Byrne
Keavy Handley-Byrne (born 1991, Rochester, NY) is a photographic artist and writer who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They received their BFA from SUNY Purchase College and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, both in photography, and teach photography at University of the Arts, Brookdale Community College, and the International Center of Photography; they have also taught at SUNY Purchase, the Rhode Island School of Design, Ocean County College. They have contributed numerous exhibition and photobook reviews, artist interviews, and educational materials to Strange Fire Collective, Float Magazine, Round Lemon UK, and Photo-Spark magazine.
Handley-Byrne’s photographic work is concerned primarily with ideas around identity and mortality. Paper Lighthouse, published with St. Agnes Studio, gathers vernacular snapshots of women with their eyes closed, in reference to their late grandmother, whom they only know through photographic images that share this quality. Their ongoing project, Death Cannot Kill What Never Dies, is a rumination on mortality and affect, mediated through the grounds of Green-Wood Cemetery, a national historic site and 478-acre Cemetery located in Brooklyn. Engaging with texts by Lee Edelman, Heather Love, and Jack Halberstam, they explore the grounds of the cemetery, itself queer and in constant transition, as a site for feeling and reflection for their portrait sitters.