Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/1024601
Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. "Most of my photographs aren't staged, but I do strive to make something that is theatrical," Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. tells me at his kitchen table on a stagnant summer night. The dichotomy between natural and theatrical seems irreconcilable, but Brown proves otherwise. The photographer shoots candid moments, often of close friends, family and fellow artists. This could make for a straightforward narrative of personal intimacy—yet Brown finds a way to move beyond conventional portraits. His collaborators are found with their backs turned, eyes scrunched in laughter and bodies contorted away from the lens. They shift our point of view, asking us to leave the literal behind. "There's a reason why I insist the biographical information not be the most important reading of the image. I don't want my relationship with the person I'm photographing to end the conversation." Rather, Brown says, "I'm interested in the residue of presence or activity, which encourages a slower, more ambiguous reading, versus an image that explicitly shows that action." In repurposing biography, Brown's work requires a reckoning with the broad words associated with identity politics. "At the beginning of college," Brown remembers, "my artist statement literally said, 'I am looking at the intersection of blackness and queer identity.' I was being confronted with all these terms, and it took time to make them my own." This process was helped along by the artist's taking a series of self-portraits—an introspective process that solidified Brown's interest in framing narratives, rather than playing a starring role. In September, Brown braces for a new act: journeying to New Orleans, where he begins a nine- month residency program through the St. Roch Community Church in the 8th Ward. Though this residency marks the first time Elliott Brown will live outside New York, he expresses a gravitational pull to the region. "I have a deep relationship with the South, though it feels internal rather than physical," he says. Emanating an unmistakable warmth himself, Brown will have no trouble drawing from his new life and cast of collaborators. culturedmag.com 165 Brown's Low tack, 2018, is an unstaged portrait, but the artist imbues it with a sense of theatricality. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.