Berry van Galen

Berry van Galen is a fine art photographer based in Amsterdam, working with layered photographic compositions that explore themes of identity, memory, and transformation. After graduating from the Academy of Theatre and Performance in 1983, Van Galen spent nearly a decade with Toneelgroep Amsterdam (Amsterdam Theatre Group), where she established and headed the educational department. In 1993, she trained as a multicamera director at the Media Academy, leading to a career in television directing and production. From 1995 to 2000, she was a staff director at Joop van den Ende Productions, directing popular Dutch television series. In 2006, Van Galen founded her own production company, focusing on human interest story telling for television and corporate film. This narrative-driven approach would later become central to her photographic practice. Van Galen transitioned to photography in 2016, enrolling at the Fotoacademie Amsterdam (Photography Academy Amsterdam). In 2019, she was published three times in Vulkan Magazine with fashion editorials and won first prize as “Emerging Talent” at FotoFestival Naarden in the graduating students category. She graduated from the Fotoacademie Amsterdam in June 2021 with a focus on autonomous photography. Her work examines the fluid boundaries between self and other, using photographic collage, double exposure, and layered compositions to visualize how memory, identity, and time interweave. Drawing from her personal experience as an identical twin, Van Galen creates images that speak to the universal human longing to be truly seen. Her work has been exhibited in the Netherlands and continues to explore the question: 'who was I, who am I, and who might I become?'