Barry Salzman

Barry Salzman (born 1963) is an award‑winning contemporary artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans photography, video, and mixed media. Born in Zimbabwe and educated in South Africa, he emigrated to the United States at age 21. After an initial business career, Salzman turned to art full‑time, driven by an early impulse—already as a teenager—to document racially segregated areas under Apartheid in a bid to understand the inequalities around him.

Salzman’s work has been exhibited internationally and is held in major collections, including the EKARD Collection and Sanders Collection in the Netherlands, as well as the Blavatnik Family Archives in New York City. In 2018 he was named International Photographer of the Year (Deeper Perspective category) by the International Photography Awards for his project The Day I Became Another Genocide Victim, which seeks to humanize those who suffered in the Rwandan genocide.

Since 2014, Salzman has focused on projects that confront trauma and collective memory—particularly the recurrence of genocide and society’s responsibility as public witness. He creates abstract landscapes at sites of atrocity, using literal and metaphorical imagery to explore themes of witnessing, complicity, and healing. His pared‑down compositions remind us that “that place” of violence could be anywhere, inviting viewers to reflect on their own roles in both remembering and preventing atrocities.

Salzman holds an MFA in Photography, Video, and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, a Bachelor of Business Science from the University of Cape Town, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He currently divides his time between New York City and Cape Town.