Her Biogrpahy:

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn was born in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York in 1979. She enjoyed a liberal arts childhood studying cartooning and illustration under her uncle, illustrator Leonard Armstrong. Barrayn also spent nearly a decade studying ballet and modern dance. As a student at Martin Luther King High school she was fortunate to study under Dr. Joan Burroughs and Jean Destine. She has performed at the Apollo Theater and Aaron Davis Hall.
The historic Million Woman March in 1997 sparked her desire to seriously pursue photography. Since then she has built a portfolio that includes series from her global travels and local documentaries. Barrayn’s work received national attention when her images were included in the Deborah Willis photo-anthology, “BLACK: A Celebration of a Culture,” co-published by the Smithsonian Institution. Barrayn’s affinity for jazz was recognized by the Jazz Journalist Association in 2005 when she was granted the Clarence Atkins Fellowship for her jazz writings. Her journalism has taken her abroad to Asia, Africa and the Caribbean and her writing has appeared in Essence, The Source, Uptown, Complex, STUDIO: The Magazine of the Studio Museum in Harlem among other publications.

TRACE magazine produced a feature story in their fall ‘07 issue on her photography collective, She Shootin’. As an exhibiting fine arts photographer, Barrayn has shown at The African American Museum Philadelphia, PCOG Gallery, Danny Simmons’ Corridor Gallery, Art Gotham Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art, DC, just to name a few. She has curated exhibitions at the Brooklyn Historical Society and the Brooklyn Public Library. Her latest solo exhibition, Kindred Cool, will open at MoCADA on August 3, 2008. (more details on her latest exhibition: Kindred Cool)

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