Brittany Bradley

Studio E3

Medium: Photography

"I was given a camera at the early age of eight, and I began to learn photography. I kept at it. As an adult, I use photography to explore darkness, sadness, and misunderstood fringes of human experience with a childlike curiosity. Photography allows me to examine and present some parts of humanity that I share with my subjects and my audiences and that we might otherwise never discuss. I look for the roles identity, depression, sexuality, and trauma occupy in people’s lives.

Most of collodion, both modern and historical, is a perpetual representation of the white male gaze. A perspective that has not truly shifted since the medium’s conception over 150 years ago. I am interested in how a medium that has continually been used to exploit marginalized voices, could instead be adapted to amplify and empower. I’m looking to make the images that were omitted from the version of history I was presented in school.

My observation of these sometimes hidden experiences and motivations is a seam that runs through my work. The challenges of my chosen alternative photographic process reinforce my openness to experimentation and my acceptance of unexpected results. Technical mastery is vulnerable to variables of weather, emotions, and chemistry, and just like a child, I’m not in charge of those.

I document today’s historical hours with my large-format camera and mobile darkroom just as those before me used the medium to show the wilderness and human endeavors of their times. My photographs are informed by my childhood gaze, where it lingers, the views I seek from my past and in my present: Now.

Artist Website