STEPHEN BROOKBANK

STEPHEN BROOKBANK

Stephen Brookbank’s interest is essentially that of a documentarian. His work focuses on the interdependence of our working and living communities, with allusions to broader issues of our times, quietly expressed. Through time exposures of available light, whether from a town's reflected light off an overcast sky, a simple streetlight, or a bulb’s illumination in a living room, Brookbank’s photographs serve as allegories.

Stephen Brookbank studied photography at Dawson College in Montreal and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax. His work has since been exhibited widely, with solo shows at 2of2Gallery, Toronto; Toronto Image Works and Rawls Museum Arts, an affiliate of Virginia Museum of the Arts in Courtland, Virginia. Group shows include the Center for Fine Art Photography in Denver, the Gallery at 3rd Ward in New York, Newspace Center for Photography in Portland and the Grimsby Public Art Gallery, among other venues.

EAST SIDE
How our living and working environments are shaped by human experience is a predominate concern in this body of work. How the mind’s eye might travel when we catch a glimpse of our shared humanity through the framework of a window. What do we see in the looking glass of a doorway to a man’s home, steeped in the sweat of a life observed? This work documents residential, industrial communities. I wish to explore the relationships between our neighborhoods, the services that provide us with the light and warmth of our homes, the industries that are the backbone of so many communities. I am attempting to portray the humanity of a neighborhood in the presence of such things as a transmission grid, factory, or power plant. The title of this series, East Side, is a reference to the architecture and artifacts that grew up around early planners and industrialists building housing downwind from factories. Neighborhoods and towns where so many of us came from and call home is the starting point of my work.

The industrial revolution pulled people away from agricultural lives to the burgeoning factories, which led to the huge growth of cities. This transformation created vast new wealth but also the misery portrayed in the fiction of Charles Dickens and the photography of such masters as Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine. Economists tell us that we are in the midst of a tremendous shift in which global economic forces are having an immediate impact on many of our communities. Undoubtedly, the lifestyle and architecture I am photographing are in decline. My intention with this collection is to capture the self-reliance and strength of a people in a sometimes degraded and forsaken landscape. The uncertainty and uneasiness of our own times and issues of social justice are things I consider while producing this work. I focus on communities where the interplay between life and work are not so easily distilled or understood. A theme first articulated by Walker Evans, a photographer who so brilliantly documented late 1930s America, is how the present time will look as the past. This idea is of great interest to me. Many of the images explore the effects long exposures at night have in terms of colour and density through the available, primarily artificial light of a scene. The stark solitude and luminescence of night, from the lights of an apartment building to sentinel streetlights and autos lit like beacons. The man-made light in our community streets reveals much that might be overlooked in the banality of day.


CURRICULUM VITAE

EDUCATION
1992 – 95 Bachelor of Art, Major in Photography, Minor in Film, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Nova Scotia
1991 – 92 Dawson Institute of Photography, Montreal, Quebec

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2009 East Side, 2 of 2 Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
2008 Live/Work, Toronto Image Works Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
2007 In Between, Rawls Museum Arts (an affiliate of Virginia Museum of Arts), Courtland, Virginia
2005 Blue, Smithfield Cultural Arts Center, Smithfield, Virginia
2005 Blue, Rawls Museum Arts, Courtland, Virginia

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2012 Home - Curated by Harvey Stein, Umbrella Arts, New York, New York
2012 Art Gallery of Hamilton Spring Art Sale, Hamilton, Ontario
2012 Papier 12 Contemporary Art Fair, Montreal, Quebec
2012 PMG Editions Project, Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
2010 Artwork featured at Toronto International Art Fair, Toronto, Ontario
2010 The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
2010 The Canadian Landscape, Agnes Jamieson Gallery, Minden, Ontario
2009 The Best of the Season, Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
2009 Microcosm, Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
2009 In Between, with Hullihen Williams Moore, Suffolk Museum, Suffolk, Virginia
2008 Juried Photography Invitational Exhibition, Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, New Jersey
2008 The Altered Landscape, Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, Oregon
2008 365 Days, Scratch Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
2007 Up & Now! 12th Annual Photographic Exhibition, Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle, Washington
2007 Imprint, Scratch Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
2007 Interactions, The Center for Fine Arts Photography, Denver, Colorado
2006 New In Town, Humble Media, The Gallery at 3rd Ward, Brooklyn, New York, New York
2006 *With Olivia Bernard and Evi Abeler, Hewitt Gallery of Art, New York, New York
2006 International Exhibit of Fine Art Photography, The Center for Fine Art
Photography, Denver, Colorado
2006 Annual Juried Exhibition, Grimsby Public Art Gallery, Grimsby, Ontario
2006 Celestial Images in Art, Suffolk Museum, Suffolk, Virginia, USA
2006 Annual National Arts Exhibition, Rawls Museum Arts, Courtland, Virginia
2006 Urban Optics, Contact Photography Festival at the Gladstone, Toronto, Ontario

AWARDS AND GRANTS
2012 AGH Super Auction Work selected for live fundraising auction for the Art Gallery of Hamilton conducted by Sothebys
2012 SNAP 2012 Work selected for live auction raising funds for the Aids Committee of Toronto
2011 Georgian Bay Land Trust Bayscape photography auction participant
2011 WarChild Participant in live auction
2008 Ontario Arts Council, Exhibition Assistance Grant
2008 Juror’s Recognition Award, Monmouth Museum
2006 Jim Shea Memorial Award, 2006 SNAP! Photo Competition
2005 Best Landscape, 2005 SNAP! Photo Competition

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Toronto Life Magazine- piece entitled “Gone To Pot” (January 2011)
Canadian Art Magazine
Orion Magazine-Portfolio entitled “Shaded By Smokestacks”
Camera Arts Magazine



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