Brooke Shaden explores the darkness and light in people, and her work looks at that juxtaposition. As a self-portrait artist, she photographs herself and becomes the characters of dreams inspired by a childhood of intense imagination and fear. Being the creator and the actor, Brooke controls her darkness and confronts those fears. We asked her a few questions about her life and work:
All About Photo: When did you realize you wanted to be a photographer?
BS:I graduated from college with degrees in film and English, and I have always wanted to tell stories. The stories I was telling weren't fulfilling my personal creative process, mostly because I like to create one concept and move on rather quickly. Photography allowed me to tell many stories, nearly one a day, and create at a more fast-paced level. Once I started shooting, I knew I wanted to do photography full time about 5 months in.
AAP: Where did you study photography?
BS:I am self-taught in photography but did study filmmaking before that at Temple University.
AAP: How long have you been a photographer?
BS:I have been doing photography for 4 1/2 years now.
AAP: Do you remember your first shot? What was it?
BS:Absolutely! My first picture was done on December 19, 2008 in my bedroom in Philadelphia. It was a self-portrait and a clone shot where I placed myself in the image twice.
Brooke Shaden, Catharsis
AAP: What or who inspires you?
BS:I am inspired by paintings, by nature, fairytales, and darkness. I love finding beauty in darkness.
AAP: How could you describe your style?
BS:Dark, mysterious, timeless, whimsical, square format, painterly.
AAP: Do you have a favorite photograph or series?
BS:Dream Catcher and Changing Winds. These two images are that are shot in a sewer, and I am working on a new series in which I edit images taken in a dark and dirty space to make it beautiful.
AAP: What kind of gear do you use? Camera, lens, digital, film?
BS:Canon 5D Mark II and a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 lens.
AAP: Do you spend a lot of time editing your images?
BS:I spend anywhere from 2 hours to 40 hours editing my pictures, and I do so because I love creating new worlds with my creative process.
Brooke Shaden, Limitless
AAP: Favorite(s) photographer(s)?
BS:Gregory Crewdson, Jamie Baldrige.
AAP: What advice would you give a young photographer?
BS:Figure out what you love to shoot, and then shoot it. Try not to think about what other people want you to do. Be passionate, inspired, and always believe that you are worth those feelings.
Within the vast expanse of the Brazilian Amazon forest thrives a community known as the Ribeirinhos or river dwellers. Among them live the traditional midwives who welcome life and share stories as they travel through the rivers that crisscross the landscape. The Enchanted Ones by Stephanie Pommez is a tribute to their legends and myths. These tales are intricately woven into the fabric of the Ribeirinho culture, enriching our understanding of the Amazon forest and the river dwellers’ profound connection with their environment. Stephanie Pommez is a photographer and filmmaker based in New York. Her images have been published and exhibited in various countries and her documentary broadcasted on channels such as National Geographic, Arte, TV Cultura, TV5 among others.
The life’s work of one of the most important photojournalists of our time, covering major events in American history from the 1960s to present
Stephen Shames is an American photojournalist for more than five decades. In his award-winning photo essays, he draws attention to social issues such as child poverty and racism. During his career Shames authored numerous books, among others Power to the People: The World of the Black Panthers and Outside the Dream: Child Poverty in America. Kehrer Verlag is now publishing a comprehensive book containing many unpublished photos. Although Shames photographed many diverse subjects including presidents from Kennedy to Obama, activists and visionaries like Martin Luther King or Stephen Hawking, and people from countless cultures, there is a thread connecting his pictures: Shames’ photos of children and families focus on what tears us apart and binds us together: violence and abuse, but also love, hope, and transcendence. The images come from his heart and soul.
Travelling widely, Ralph Gibson works primarily in inspired series, associated image reveries in both monochrome and colour, whose titles―The Somnambulist, Déjà-Vu, Days at Sea, and Chiaroscuro―underline the particular poetic sensibility that informs his work. Starting out in 1960 with Dorothea Lange, he made his way to New York in 1967 and was soon considered in the same light as the likes of Larry Clark and Diane Arbus. The photographs and series can of course speak for themselves. But for Gibson there is a philosophy at play behind the image, and in the included short texts he proposes his thesis. Nudes, portraits, still lives, narratives―loyal to his Leica, Gibson ranges between genres and creates new categories of vision. He gets closer to things and meditates on them in a way that only the silence of the image can attempt.Produced in close collaboration with the artist, this book offers the fruit of more than six decades of image-making. From Gibson’s first photographs in San Francisco, Hollywood, and New York in the 1960s right up to the present day, this is the most comprehensive collection of this highly acclaimed photographer.
An unflinching exploration of aging from one of the twentieth century’s most influential photographers
For more than half a century, Richard Avedon sought to represent advancing age in the faces of the people he photographed. From his earliest years at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue through to the twenty-first century, Avedon routinely and audaciously broke the rule of flattering public personalities in his portraits. Instead, he chose to highlight the onslaught of what he called the “avalanche of age,” dramatizing the universal experience of getting older.
Accompanying a groundbreaking exhibition at The Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University and The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Immortal is the first book to delve into Avedon’s unflinching representation of aging throughout his career.
This elegant hardcover volume features nearly 100 portraits of cultural luminaries, each printed in striking tritone, such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Truman Capote, Marcel Duchamp, Duke Ellington, Toni Morrison, Patti Smith, and Stephen Sondheim, as well as one of Avedon’s last self-portraits. Texts by a star-studded cohort of authors, including Vince Aletti, Adam Gopnik, Paul Roth, and Gaëlle Morel, shed new light on an under-represented element of Avedon’s practice.
Thoughtfully edited and beautifully produced, Immortal testifies emphatically to the determination with which people confront the relentless advance of mortality.
