Hi I'm Tamara Lackey on this episode of redefine show for AdoramaTV, I speak
with fine art portrait photographer, Brooke Shaden, about how she based so
much of her fine art work around self-portraits, and why that became so
important not only to her incredibly well-received pieces, but also to her own
self. Pretty interesting stuff. Check it out.
AdoramaTV presents 'The reDefine show' with Tamara Lackey.
Hi Brooke, how are you?
Wonderful. How are you?
Good! Thank you for...you just got in from Los Angeles to Las Vegas a few seconds ago.
I'm not even sure if my car is towed or not. We're going to have to find out.
You just literally...because we had this
time set but you were coming from LA. Were you speeding?
I was not. I am the
safest driver. You would be so proud of me and that's why I got here right on time
So you timed it all perfectly. You've got the parking lot and then you raced up to the suite.
Yes but to me I'm late because I'm chronically early for everything. OK because you
came in apologizing, we were like, you're exactly on time.
I realized that after I started apologizing but it's just a natural thing.
So we're friends which I'm very grateful
for and I've seen your work, like from a while ago, progress and one of
the big things that's so interesting about you work, well your work is interesting, like unique
and stands out and beautiful. You started out shooting self-portraits so you could
do them and control them and make the story you wanted to buy using yourself
as the model, but it's kind of deepened along the way. Can you share a little bit more about that?
Yeah, you know when I started I came from a film background
so I was very much in this mindset of anything that I want to do, has to be
done with five, at least five other people, who were directly getting their
hands in it and changing it a little bit and so when I got out of film school, it was
kind of like a breath of fresh air. I was like, you know what, I can do whatever I
want. I don't have to hire a model. I don't have to have somebody light the
scene for me, so I started doing everything from setting up cheap lights to
being the person in front of the camera and doing the
editing and everything.
Everything.
Everything. And I loved it so I didn't have to leave
my house which was awesome, because I was so anti social that I was like I can
stay right here where I want to be and do everything and then I started to
realize after sharing my work with more and more people that it's an interesting
component to work, to be a self portrait artist. I never really thought about it
was just something that I did because it was fun and it was easy and I liked it
and I started realizing that the more you create self-portraits, the more you
are sort of creating a character for yourself, and not just doing that but
giving other people permission to create characters for themselves and really
become comfortable with who you are and I love that idea that you can be who you
want to be through art, and I don't think that a lot of people have that freedom
in their lives to just be whoever they want to be and to discover who their
best self is so I became kind of obsessed with that idea of saying, well,
OK, I have a way of... sort of an outlet for myself to be who I want to be and do what
I want to do and why not use that to encourage others and not just do it because
its fun or because I've control, but because it heightens the art in some way.
To be able to see the artist as a character and as the creator.
And various characters. You're not just Brooke Shaden, you're also this deep, like darkly
tormented
character and you're this like I would perceive, kind of fleeing and
free and flowing and you kind of have this whole range of characters.
Exactly and this for me was really important to discover. When I started I would always
say to people, well the characters I'm portraying have nothing to do with me
like totally separate.
I'm happy, I'm good.
Right, I'm like I'm happy, I'm not a creepy person. You're going to like me
I swear and then it became sort of this metamorphosis of saying 'Whoa,
actually, they're exactly me. Like that is who I am exactly and it's about really
Because they're all components.
Exactly and it's about really finding
that deeper self I guess. You know at first you're doing these self portraits and you're
saying 'oh well that's not me, that's not me', but you're like of course it is. It's the deepest part
of you. It's the part that is so much you. That's what comes out when you
begin creating and I think that's our truest self so it's very interesting.
We spend a lot of time hiding.
Oh, exactly and I love that because it's about being vulnerable and
asking yourself well who are you really and how can you portray that? And it might feel
like you're looking at a different person in the end when you create that
type of art but really it's just... it's who maybe you don't want to acknowledge
or who've never bothered to acknowledge before.
Right, which ties in beautifully
to this tattoo that says 'Fear is the mind killer' and positioned so that you can read it.
Exactly, exactly yeah. It's from my favorite book series 'Dune' by Frank
Herbert, it's a science fiction series and when I read that line, I've
always had major issues with fear from fear of death to just like fear that
there's a monster under my bed, just ridiculous things and one day I just
thought to myself this is getting crazy, I mean I'm scared to sleep by myself
at night and things that an 18 year old shouldn't have to think about and then I
said if it's this bad now then it's never going to get better as an adult
because all I've seen in my life from adults is that they develop more and more
fear as they get older and I didn't want to be like that.
This is interesting because you would think that growth is the shedding of these neurocities and anxieties.
But really the fear's just become deeper and more serious.
Because, and also, part of it is that you
overtime, witness more of how bad things can be and then it creeps in and it's
it's such an effort to push it out. And then, so your work, looking at your
work, there's a lot of squares in the composition what is that all about?
So when I started photography, I actually hated it, like I took a class in high
school and didn't do well in it and didn't enjoy the class and was kind of like I'm never
going to do this again. I hate photography. It's not for me and so that I went into
film-making immediately after it and I thought, well film-making is fun because I can do
whatever I want and I can, you know it's just, I don't know more free for me so when I went into
film-making I said I'm never going to do photography ever again. I don't like it as
a medium. I'm not going to do anything
else so I started writing, making films but when I got out of college I sort of went
back to photography because I had been majoring in film, creative writing and
literature and I'd been doing so much of that but I was like let's revisit this other art form
and I did. I still didn't love it and so I thought, well, I love painting and I
love sketches and I love all these other art farms so maybe if I just get rid of
that 2:3 ratio that a standard photograph has and I won't see the
photograph so much and it won't bother me that I don't actually like this art form as
much so I decided..
To re-invent the canvas to suit what you are drawn to.
Exactly and I asked myself a little bit
of well what am I drawn to visually. If I were just to look at a scene, what
does that look like to me, and it was always a center composition with a
square frame around it and I thought well if it's a square, you get rid of
that ratio, I can't see any... I don't see the medium, I see the message to quote
a famous person, but so I thought why not, you know, I'll stick with it and it's
become how I see now, like everything I see, it's always a square like how am I going to
put that in a square frame.
And then so even your panoramics?
Exactly I love, love, love creating three images to put together but I always make sure that
they're three separate squares so that when I go to an exhibition or something
it's three separate framed prints on the wall that go together as you look across it.
Well that's so cool.
Yeah, I like it a lot.
Thank you so much Brooke. Check us out here next time. I'm
going to continue my discussion with Brooke, but we're on a whole different topic.
We're talking about post-processing in detail and while you're coming back here
on a AdoramaTV, don't forget to subscribe. There's a ton of information on this site.