Stephanie Brown
About the Artist
Stephanie Brown is a Jamaican descendant born and raised in Delray Beach, Florida. She holds a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design, as well as an MFA degree in Interdisciplinary Art and Museum Studies Certificate from the University of Michigan.
Stephanie grew up at the intersection of her Jamaican and Black American identities. Broadly her work is a reflection of her internal self/ancestral exploration. The work is a historical yet critical investigation of identity construction and the occurrence of implicit and explicit bias in the world around us. Stephanie visually navigates the concepts in her work with photography, object making, creative writing, and interactive installation to create thought provoking imagery and dialogue that ultimately challenge narratives in the world that informs who we choose to be as individuals.
In between her studies, Stephanie has sailed the Mediterranean as a portrait photographer on a cruise ship and has served as a youth art educator for several years. She has exhibited internationally in France, the United Kingdom, and Mexico. Nationally her work has been exhibited in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, and North Carolina. In 2019, Stephanie had a debut solo exhibition titled “Do Not Bleach” at the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala, FL and presented her photography at Prizm Art Fair during Miami’s Art Basel. Stephanie is actively based in Atlanta, Georgia.
www.stephaniebphotos.com
@createdbrown
Artist Statement
There is something about blinding light that stirs my spirituality.
I investigate light and the forms they create when activated within spaces. These found forms within forms can only be discovered with light. Without light there is no form; nothing to discover. In this series, Light & Love, you find my most intuitive artwork. Graphic, sculptural, chiaroscuro explorations of light curated through and on surfaces inclusive of foliage, architecture, and human skin.
Simplicity in lines, angles, and space in between.
The body is a tool, a vessel and surface that manipulates the light to create new forms and patterns that require me to investigate the geometric lessons the light and form combined propose. The work is often best described with poetry to express my rhythmic relationship with light. The kiss of cascading light raking across forms revealing segments of textures and concealing others leave the images feeling moody, daring, and proud.
These images are achieved in spaces with minimal lighting, setting the camera in B&W color mode to better see the shapes of light and shadow on the body, and enlisting the help of models comfortable in their most vulnerable skin, nudity. This represents my developed appreciation and relationship with skin, and my heart’s desire to honor people for who they are, as they are.
Past lives and lives yet to be lived
The light I observe is hope I bask in
This developed style of monochromatic photography has a unique ability to both reveal and conceal phenotypical ethnic traits. Black and white is a special combination that creates tonal greys, which interrupt the monotony of binary thought processes and opinions. Binary thought is the tendency to only relate to concepts as extremes: this or that, good or bad, and fails to acknowledge the values in-between those extremes – grey.