brookes britcher

in my never-ending analysis of potential graduate photography programs, i found myself browsing cranbrook academy's website yesterday. as of yet, i remain wary about their program as my work tends towards the narrative, and their philosophy toward the conceptual (they do have a very intriguing reading list though), but i saw some work i kind of really liked. namely, i found the work of brookes britcher who coincidentally graduated a year ahead of me at drexel. i remember his work as being tightly composed, eggelston-esqe images (see below). i remember really liking them.

his most recent body of work (example above), comepleted for his mfa at cranbrook, completely shocked me in how far it came from his work at drexel. if i remember correctly (which i do), brookes went straight from his undergraduate program into his graduate program. i was cautioned that such a choice is risky because you are unlikely to grow beyond your undergraduate body of work. i guess that is a common complaint or something, but this was not the case for brookes. at all. i can't help but wonder if the vastly different philosphies of the two programs provided a necessary framework for moving in such a new direction. if i knew him personally i might ask him.

brooke's project statement:

Pattern and system become a means to process and comprehend the world around us, and the decisions that we consciously and unconsciously make. Through the implementation of a system, form is generated and possibilities for understanding present themselves. The photographic experience lies at the forefront of these thresholds of understanding, and it is through this medium that we have the potential to better comprehend our behavior, as well as our digestion and embracing of the images that confront us everyday. Exploration and assessment of this photographic information is necessary to fully understand our relationship to the image and how that relationship shapes the way in which we interact and experience our world.

it took me a while to break down his project statement into something that fit with my reading of the work. for me, the images decronstruct the snapshot (amoung other things) in order to analyze, almost in a scientific way, how photography dictates our behavior and experience (i'm mostly trying to relate the statement to the above image).

it remains unclear to me, however, whether "pattern and system" refers to the snapshot as such a mechanism or if he is referring to his decision to implement his own system or pattern. either way, the work is really strong. brookes has a website, but there isn't anything on there yet.