Niall O’Brien
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Overview
Featured
eir — For All
Seth Rogen for Mr. Porter
TERSA
In 2022 Niall O’Brien was commissioned by a photography foundation to self-produce a project inspired by the current state of the United States of America.
“For this work I concentrate on what’s considered the busiest freeway in LA county, the 405. Freeways act as an artery to the city’s day-to-day. Affected massively after the lockdown was announced there was an almost instantaneous environmental reaction to the lack of cars on the usually backed up lanes. It was quite something to see clear skies and hear locals talking fondly of the state of the city’s air despite what was happening with the global pandemic. Two years later, as the city tries to get itself back together, the traffic is back with vengeance. Still, a major talking point but with added darkness. There has been a rise in violent road rage reports, shootings, a sense of lawlessness while driving and the smog is as thick as ever. This work has become an objective portrait of the 405. The suburbs, the streets, and the people in and around the 72-mile stretch of a structure that binds a city together.” — NIALL O’BRIEN
Project
405
Project
Blue Crawfish
A series of photographs Niall took between 2015 and 2017 while driving through Louisiana in search of Gothic America. What he found was darkness juxtaposed with beauty, and a strange isolation — or, as he put it, "an underbelly of the American dream."
Niall explained that the name, Blue Crawfish, comes from a children's story shared by a teenaged frog hunter he photographed in the backwoods of Cathoula. As the story goes, a blue craw overhears fisherman talking about a "broil" but mishears this as "ball." Intrigued, she climbs into the fishermen's net thinking she's going to a dance, unknowingly sealing her fate in the process.
Project
Porn Hurts Everyone
An insightful and respectful look at the lives of individuals and communities struggling to thrive in the, often grim, political and economic landscape of small-town U.S.A.
These images were taken during a 4,000-mile road trip across northwestern America and resulted in a published book by the same name released May 2017.
Project
Good Rats
A photographic series Niall O’Brien undertook from 2006 to 2011 while observing and documenting the lives of a group of young punks from South-West London.
Good Rats has exhibited internationally in London, New York City, Berlin, Zurich and Dublin. In 2011 the series was published as a limited-edition monograph under the same name by Pau Wau Publications.
Niall O’Brien (he/him) is an Irish photographer, director and filmmaker whose accomplished oeuvre defies simple classification. Rooted in reportage storytelling and portraiture, his works possess an empathic tone grounded in the commonalities of the human experience with an honesty that is affecting as much as it is sincere. Each image captures a decisive moment, when the truth of a character is authentically illuminated; O’Brien symphonically weaves these moments into the larger arc of harrowing human stories, that many would otherwise overlook. Embracing cinematic qualities and the psychic essence of the personal narrative, O’Brien’s documentations serve as poignant tributes to the people and places he meets.
Born in Dublin, Ireland, O’Brien studied fine art photography at the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, and has since exhibited internationally across Europe, Asia, and the U.S.
He is now based in Los Angeles, CA.
Bio