Leah Tepper Byrne

Website: www.leahtepperbyrne.com

Artist statement:
The Children's Village is a 150-year-old residential treatment center and alternative to incarceration site for over 200 boys in upstate New York. It is a place where the mental health, child services, and juvenile justice systems converge. The boys live together in small cottages categorized by their specific criminal offenses and treatment needs, ranging from drug abuse to sexual offense to mental illness. It is an unusual therapeutic approach practiced in a most unusual setting marked by contrast and contradiction.

I was drawn to The Children's Village out of a need to explore what it means to be young and confined, and was struck by the suspension of reality and time that seems to inhabit its borders. At the end of a country road, surrounded by woods, with its own transportation system, school, and many interweaving hierarchies among its constantly rotating residents and staff, The Children's Village is, in a sense, its own universe. The majority of boys living at The Children's Village are in their teens, and they are caught in the middle in more ways than one; they are neither free nor in jail, no longer children but not quite adults. My work is a visual exploration of life at the intersection of transition, confinement, isolation, and healing.

Bio:
Leah Tepper Byrne was born in Montreal and raised in Toronto, Canada. She began her photographic career in 2007 by documenting the work of a team of forensic anthropologists uncovering a mass grave in central Spain. Since then, her work has been exhibited in numerous group shows, most recently at the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China. Prior to pursuing photography, Leah lived in London, England, where she performed and received formal training in corporeal mime. She is a recent graduate of the International Center of Photography's Documentary and Photojournalism Program. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.