JOEL BROWN

MEDIUM

Photography

ARTIST STATEMENT

“I’ve had a career-long love of the process of shooting and developing images using film cameras. I prefer to visualize and capture an image on film, and develop and print it in the darkroom.”

ARTIST BIO

Brown was born in Ohio but has lived in Southern California since the early age of 3. Photography came into his life while attending Cypress College in the early 70s.

After college, Brown went to work for the United States Postal Service and helped start the Art Department for the Santa Ana P&DC. He has won many awards for his work as well as inclusion in the permanent collection of the Library of Congress.

For nearly 40 years, Brown has been photographing in the tradition of the West Coast photographers who were active in the first half of the 20th century. He is especially inspired by the work of photo pioneers Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham, while Jock Sturges’ work of the last 30 years has also been a large influence.

Brown’s equipment consists of a medium format camera and an 8×10 large-format wooden camera shooting black and white film. He does his own film processing and printing in the “wet darkroom” tradition. No computer or digital manipulation is used.

Brown continues to photograph people and places that compel him to create a photograph. Brown envisions continuing to work in film, processing his images himself, for as long as the materials are available. Much of his commitment to photography is tied to the traditional, chemistry-based process, and he finds it hard to describe himself as a photographer without including this component into that definition.

With a little luck, he will be able to continue to do so.