Stephen Brookbank
Born and raised in Nova Scotia, Stephen Brookbank uses the photographic process in a documentary fashion that places him firmly in the role of visual anthropologist. Stephen shoots 4×5 negatives and creates his prints with a Chromira on chromogenic paper.
His work focuses on contemporary social and economic uncertainty, adopting banal images of North America’s urban landscape as raw material for his visual record. The exchange between life and work is a primary concern for Brookbank, eliciting him to extend the explorations of early American documentary photographers into what the present world will look like as a past-era. Creating a cinematic atmosphere within his images, the artist finds allegories among simple realities of life such as distinction between light emitted from an overcast sky on a town, the glow of a streetlamp in a residential area, and the illumination afforded a living room by a simple light bulb.
Brookbank's most recently completed series, Water.Rock.Time., embodies an exploration of the North Atlantic Ocean - the coastal environment where he grew up. The series is part of an ongoing collaborative project between Brookbank and novelist/short story writer, Ian Colford.
Born and raised in Nova Scotia, Stephen Brookbank uses the photographic process in a documentary fashion that places him firmly in the role of visual anthropologist. Stephen shoots 4×5 negatives and creates his prints with a Chromira on chromogenic paper.
His work focuses on contemporary social and economic uncertainty, adopting banal images of North America’s urban landscape as raw material for his visual record. The exchange between life and work is a primary concern for Brookbank, eliciting him to extend the explorations of early American documentary photographers into what the present world will look like as a past-era. Creating a cinematic atmosphere within his images, the artist finds allegories among simple realities of life such as distinction between light emitted from an overcast sky on a town, the glow of a streetlamp in a residential area, and the illumination afforded a living room by a simple light bulb.
Brookbank's most recently completed series, Water.Rock.Time., embodies an exploration of the North Atlantic Ocean - the coastal environment where he grew up. The series is part of an ongoing collaborative project between Brookbank and novelist/short story writer, Ian Colford.
