“I still don’t know if I want to dedicate my life to photography, but right now it is the single most fulfilling way of creating. I do know that I want to dedicate my life to storytelling, no matter what medium that might take in the future.“ -Brooke Shaden
Surreal and dark
34 year-old Brooke Shaden grew up in Amish country in Pennsylvania. She attended Temple University and studied filmmaking and English. By late 2008, she had graduated from Temple with two degrees. She began her photography life as “a fine art photographer specializing in surreal and dark self-portraiture.”
Brooke focused her visual storytelling on working with a still camera. She used herself as the model for her studies of scenes that were both atmospheric in feeling but with an otherworldly vision. Her work could be dark. It might be whimsical and was often surreal.
Brooke describes her photography simply saying it is “Dark, mysterious, timeless, whimsical, square format, painterly.”
She works on an image for 2–40 hours in post-production.
Canon then Sony
Her early work was done with a Canon 5D Mark II and a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 lens.
In March 2017, Shaden became a Sony Artisan of Imagery. On her profile there she says, “I’m endlessly fascinated by darkness and how much of ourselves we can discover within it. That’s part of why I’m a self-portrait artist. My background is in film and English literature, but I became a photographer when I discovered I could put my love of storytelling into single frames.”
Current projects
Brooke Shaden is still hard at work as a storyteller she describes this way, “[I’m] working on a new series about death and grief and writing my first YA fantasy novel. My favorite ways other people have described me: ‘The bravest shy person and the most normal weirdo you’ll ever meet.’
“Photography is one of those rare experiences that allows you to see in a different way,” Shaden said. “I think that pursuing it as a career opens up a new life that you may never have seen previously. It is always a struggle to choose a career that is uncertain and essentially creative, but it is so rewarding that the word sacrifice never felt applicable.”
She has a blog called Promoting Passion where she writes about photography and her inspirations.
Philanthropist
Brooke Shaden is committed to helping survivors of human trafficking in Kolkata, India. She taught the survivors self-expression. She opened a photography school, The Light Space, in 2015. Its goal was to give those in underprivileged communities creative and sustainable careers.
Teacher
“I never thought anyone would want to hear what I have to say, but photography has let me glimpse the power a story can have on someone else. I discovered myself as a creator and as a character, both very important roles in my life.”
Shaden continues, talking about creativity and teaching, “Creating is often seen as a selfish endeavor because it satisfies something inside often before thinking about how it affects others. I can see nothing less selfish than the act of creating because when you express your truest self, you encourage others by example to do the same. I want to help people to express themselves in their most authentic way through art in the hope that what they create will inspire someone else to do the same.”
Career advice
“Find what you want to say — what your core message is — the thing you feel needs to be expressed before you die,” Shaden said. “Once you have an inkling of what that might be, create it. Create it over and over until it is clear. Techniques will come and go but the message of what you are doing will remain. That is what sets one person apart from another. It is what makes us human, and art is an expression of that.”
Sources: Los Angeles Center of Photography, All About Photo
Opening photo
Top row, left to right: Rapt, spirit, battle at cliffside hill, quiet the night. Center photo below “battle at cliffside hill” I blamed a hundred hands for my violence.
Bottom row, left to right: Brighter days, limitless, undone, catharsis
Stories about inspirational photographers are posted weekly in On Photography.
