Lisa Barlow is a photographer based in Brooklyn, Colorado and Mexico City. She was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in New York City. She made her series Holy Land U.S.A. as an undergraduate at Yale. She was an American Studies major. Larry Fink and Tod Papageorge were her photography teachers. The work won the Norman Holmes Pearson Prize in American Studies.
In the summer of 1980 she stopped at Holy Land U.S.A., a religious theme park in Waterbury, Connecticut. She went back a few times. She also photographed the people of the town, and families invited her into their homes. She used a Leica M6 with a 35mm lens. The pictures stayed in her archive for decades. During the pandemic she learned to scan her negatives and returned to them.
STANLEY/BARKER published the book Holy Land U.S.A. in 2024. It has 104 pages and a text by Brad Zellar.
Her long career includes many years as a photographer for Public Television. She taught at three private schools in New York City and wrote for ICP. She was in the 2022 cohort of the Penumbra Foundation Long Term Book Project. In 2025 her work was shown at Photo London with David Hill Gallery.
