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.
Diana Markosian’s Father is an intimate and engrossing diaristic portrayal of estrangement and reconnection, recounted through documentary photographs, family snapshots, text, and visual ephemera.
Diana Markosian: Father presents the photographer’s journey to another place and another time, where Markosian attempts to piece together an image of a familiar stranger—her long-lost father. The book explores her father’s absence, her reconciliation with him, and the shared emptiness of their prolonged estrangement. The images, made over the course of a decade, take place in her father’s home in Armenia. In Markosian’s first monograph, Santa Barbara (Aperture, 2020), the photographer recreates the story of her family’s journey from post–Soviet Russia to the US in the 1990s. Father uses both documentary photographs and archives of objects, letters, and vernacular images to probe the fifteen years of absence and separation from the photographer’s childhood. In this voyage of self-discovery, Markosian touchingly renders her longing for connection to a man she barely remembers and who asks her, when she finds him, “Why did it take you so long?”
Pedro Jarque Krebs presents WildLOVE, his long-awaited second major photo book. With his colorful photography of wild animals, he occupies a special place in wildlife photography. One of the world's most awarded wildlife photographer captures the animals with his camera in a humorous and almost human way. In this way, he builds up an intimate relationship with each animal: WildLOVE.
Pedro Jarque Krebs is a most awarded wildlife photographer with more than 100 awards to his credit. His aim is to show the beauty and diversity of wildlife, but also to draw attention to the problems and fragility of the animal world.
Find out how to transform the ordinary into something extraordinary with this guide to minimalist photography.
With advice on composition, balance, shape and texture, this book takes inspiration from the masters of minimalism to demonstrate how stripping a subject down to its very essence can help you craft beautifully bold and unique images.
Illustrated with the finest examples of the style from the likes of Fan Ho, Imogen Cunningham, Michael Kenna, Berenice Abbott, William Eggleston and Horst P. Horst, this book guides you through the key techniques that define minimalism and provides easy-to-follow advice for how to create your own minimalist images that are visually striking in their simplicity.
Photographs taken in New York over 50 years ago by Mark Cohen will be published for the first time in Tall Socks. In July 1973 Cohen spent a month living in a dorm room at NYU while taking part in a film production workshop. His daily classes were short so he used his free time to walk around the city with his camera. Only a few of the images were printed at the time and the vast majority remained unseen, except as negatives, until now.
