Hady Barry works with photography and sound to focus on deeply personal experiences that uncover universal truths and connect us all. By interrogating memory and identity, the artist’s introspective and sensitive practice is rooted in telling stories that only intimacy brings.

Born in Conakry, Guinea, and raised between Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire and Dakar, Senegal, she first picked up a camera simply to explore the world on her own. It helped Barry document her travels and remember places she never thought she could visit. She went on to study economics and African studies at Georgetown University and attained an MBA from UC Berkeley-Haas before going into social impact consulting and business development for impact-driven start-ups looking to grow in Africa.

It wasn’t until 2020 that she returned to photography. She yearned for creative expression to soothe herself after a challenging year and so directed her entire creative hustle into herself. “This time I was encouraged to think about what I wanted to explore through photography – to pick a project essentially,” Barry says. “This transition coincided with my friend Azi becoming pregnant with her second child, so I thought that it would be interesting to see if photography could help me better navigate the feelings I have about myself, womanhood and being a mother."

Azi and Barry have been friends since the age of five. They lost touch in their teens but rekindled their friendship when Barry moved back from the US to Abidjan in 2018. "I was amazed at how alike we are and yet how differently we process things. We have similar interests and are both curious about the world. Yet it is more difficult for me to navigate life than Azi. I can sit with negative thoughts for a long time whereas Azi would set them aside and not dwell so much on them,” Barry reflects. Thanks to their close kinship, Barry was able to be in Azi’s home and document the minutiae of her life with her husband, Edoua and first child, Adjela as they cared for each other and shared joyful and pensive moments in anticipation of baby Kemet’s arrival.

The resulting series, ‘Wearing the Inside Out’, helped Barry untangle her own trepidation toward motherhood. At an early age, Barry was responsible for the care of her younger siblings and felt robbed of her childhood and adolescence. The idea of taking on such a huge responsibility once more felt daunting. So, being part of Azi’s parenting journey helped the artist to accept her uncertainties, to enjoy her freedom and to realise the other ways she mothers - as a proxy to Azi’s children.

"This body of work is first and foremost for me, but also for anyone who has felt lonely or odd for questioning whether parenthood is for them. I found that women in their thirties without children relate to the anxiety and ambivalence towards motherhood that this series explores.” The work does not offer answers or attempt to be didactic, rather it gives space for the viewer to question their own relationship to parenthood. There is a relief that comes from knowing that the existential questions we all grapple with are not only unique to us.

‘Wearing the Inside Out’ was selected for the 2021 Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Barry received an Honourable Mention for her submission to the 2022 Hariban Award and is among the runners-up for the Vantage Point Photography Award. Part of the series is currently being shown at the 10th edition of Vantage Point Sharjah exhibition at Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE, and she also recently enjoyed her first solo exhibition, Waiting for Kemet, at Villa 76 in Abidjan. The location had the atmosphere of a private residence, which created a more palpable context within which to consider the themes of friendship, motherhood, mental health and the active practice of care explored in the works. In the image ‘Playing is Hard Work 2021’ we feel the energy Barry puts in as godmother to Adjela while in ‘A Mother’s Touch, 2020’ we see Azi hold Adjela's face in order to clean her nose, showing the realities of every day parenting.

Another powerful series by Barry, Nostaligia Ultra, looks at immigration and displacement and ideas of ‘home’, for which she delved into her family’s photo albums. She let the hue of these old images dictate the colour and tones of the new photographs she was making to go alongside them. The images follow her and her sister, Aicha, as they revisit their childhood haunts in Abidjan in search of catharsis and belonging. The project was as much hers, as about her family, and so Barry also incorporated her sister's diary entries into the storytelling.

Lately, Barry has been thinking about her father’s village of Tolo in Guinea and why she does not refer to it as “my” village. She is unsure where these reflections will lead her but she is curious to make a body of work about it. The first fruits of this investigation were created through the 2021 Against All Odds commission, the British Journal of Photography’s 1854 Studio x The Malala Fund grant for projects centred on remarkable girls facing challenging circumstances. The artist documented 13-year-old Aïssatou, one of few girls in Tolo who are being encouraged to finish her secondary school education.

Barry's approach to photography is influenced by the vulnerable and evocative works of Elinor Carucci, Pixy Liao, and Siân Davey. Like them, her poetic aesthetic draws you in to interpersonal relationships, where you can take your time to contemplate and to feel. As she continues to evolve her beautiful practice, this emerging artist says, “I look forward to continuing to experiment and to grow. Most importantly, I'm hoping to create work that is true and lingers in the people who engage with it.”