About Issey Goold

I’m Issey, an Irish photographer and fine artist currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York (b. 1995). 

In my work, across digital, film and wet plate collodion, I am interested in photos that embrace and reveal the zany, the interesting, and the weird in the everyday. I enjoy using conventional and traditional means of photography as they naturally lend themselves to framing the fringe. I want my viewer as baffled as my subjects by the notion of the “ordinary”. At times, this can can be read as humour or at times as kooky and kinda sexy.

My work has been exhibited at numerous prestigious galleries including the Royal Hibernian Academy Ireland (RHA) and Studio 10, Dublin, as well as featured in group exhibitions alongside local Irish artists, including at ÍOVA Group, Abbey Artists Studios, and Hens Teeth. I’ve had work published in several national publications, including The Irish Times (here) The Irish Independent (here and here), Life Magazine (here), Utopia magazine (here), and Gay Community News (here and here), as well as poster work showcased by renowned Dublin theaters including The Abbey Theatre (here) and Smock Alley Theatre (here). My work has appeared in several print formats, including as part of a postcard series by SMUT Press, and in my own 2022 collection Find Your Artists (available for purchase here), which brought together photographs of different artists (musicians, DJs, painters, sculptors) working in Ireland before and after the Pandemic.

In June 2024, I was invited to give an artist talk and workshop to the University of Cambridge research network, Ambivalent Archives. I presented my ongoing tintype project, “Generating Stanley: A Demi-Fable of Queer Lineage”, details of which can be found here. Earlier this year, I also exhibited work at Juneshine (Williamsburg, Brooklyn) as part of “Three by Grebner”.

I received an honours BFA in Fine Art Media from The National College of Art & Design, Ireland (NCAD) in 2018. During this BFA I also studied Film, Video and Photography for an exchange semester at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). In 2022, I received a postgraduate diploma in Cultural Policy & Arts Management from University College Dublin (UCD).