Wk 11 — Artist OTW — Student Choice
Artist: Brooke Shaden
Media: Fine-art photography
Website: https://brookeshaden.com/
Instagram: brookeshaden
Brooke Shaden is a photographer that studied films for years in college. She then started photography in 2008 as a self-portrait artist and photographs herself by becoming the characters in her childhood dreams that were based on intense imagination and fear. Shaden’s work looks at juxtaposition as she explores the darkness and light in people. She works around the theme of death and rebirth or beauty and decay.
Shaden’s piece called Supernova has many vivid, cool colors with the majority of the piece being blue. The piece’s background is dark for the character to stand out and the closer we look towards the smoke coming out of the subject, the brighter it is towards the center. There are many colors from the flowers coming out of the smoke from the subject. The texture throughout the artwork is rough from the uneven lines on the dirt and the dress the character is wearing. The photo is a normal size for the viewers to see it from where ever they are standing.
Shaden has a collection called Begin Again and it is an exploration of the self. The four topics in the series explore hidden self, reflected self, identified self, and contained/released self. The hidden self is a mediation on phrase, devotion, and the places we put our identity when we do not look inward. The reflected self is what the world shows us before we figure out who we are for ourselves. The identified self is moving past reflections to try on the masks we find as we explore many identities often assuming the surface role of who we want to be without digging deep enough to pull up the reality of our most authentic being. The contained/revealed self represents breaking out of the boxes we get fit into within society.
Begin Again is a collection that many people relate to. They feel the need to fit into a category in order to be liked by others, however, that does not make the person unique. They need to figure out their own personalities through what they feel comfortable doing and breaking out of the box society puts them in. Especially in society today, many social media influencers post their body images that make people question their own features in hopes to fit into the box the world views as “socially accepting”. Because of this, many people become toxic to themselves, so highlighting this concept resonants with the world currently and helps remind others that we do not need to fit into a category.
