Brooke Shaden Productions
Brooke
Shaden
Fine art photographer, novelist, motivational speaker. She makes beautiful the things that others find disturbing. Her work questions what it means to be alive.
Brooke Shaden · brookeshaden.com
"I'm a joyful person who just happens to love examining darkness, grief, and what it means to be alive. Getting closer to what I'm afraid of gives it less power over me."
Brooke Shaden took up photography in December 2008, when she graduated from Temple University with degrees in film and English. Her goal in photography is to make beautiful the things that others find disturbing. She works in square format with a heavy emphasis on post-processing. She uses the female form rather than the female identity, rarely showing faces in her photographs, and thus comments on female stereotyping. The square frame has been turned into a mirror of our own lives, one that emboldens the distressing and disturbing while juxtaposing that with beauty and depth. Her photography questions the definition of what it means to be alive.
Her career began with self-portraits: playing dead in a freezer, in a parking lot, in various other locations. She did not know at the time why she was so drawn to these depictions. Over the course of her career she understood: getting closer to what she is afraid of gives it less power over her.
I am completely taken with anything dark. I love dark art and the idea of dark fairytales. I like to make disturbing things appear beautiful: it is an interesting line to blur. I am also inspired by paintings of all sorts: I love the classics and the Pre-Raphaelite painters. Mostly I take inspiration in seeing the world differently, in trying to create a new world through art.
I have so many images that took a lot of time and sometimes pain and really odd stuff to create, but one I look back on with the most fondness was shot with my husband standing watch and a group of tourists watching who thought I was part of the staff at an old abandoned western town, like part of a show. They were all taking pictures and videotaping. I found it to be so much fun, to achieve this effect in-camera and really just play with movement and a new surrounding. I remember feeling like this image was a representation of the start of an amazing year.
My dream is to be able to build a set on the bottom of a pool and shoot underwater: preferably a lake or ocean even.
The biggest challenge is most definitely coming up with the money, or justifying spending money, on props and prints. It is essential for some of my shots to buy a certain outfit, especially because I try to make my photos look timeless so I am always searching for old props. A lot of people ask me if it is a challenge to do so many of my shots alone, and it is, but that is a fun challenge.
"It is my greatest wish that those people looking at my images can feel the atmosphere I am creating and get lost in it for a moment. This world that I am creating is unique in that everything is truly alive."
Brooke Shaden"Let's create a grief-positive movement that allows more bravery in the face of what we fear. I've made it a mission to do what scares me. I measure my life not in how fearless I am, but how brave I can be in the face of it."
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