Brooke Burton is an artist and photographer working in Boise, Idaho whose work tells psychological stories through narrative still life. She earned an MFA and a BFA, both in photography from Boise State University where she currently teaches. She interviews artists and documents their studios for the Boise City Department of Arts & History blog: Creators, Makers, & Doers. Her work has been exhibited at the former Society for Contemporary Photography in Kansas City, Missouri, the Allied Arts Association in Richland, Washington, and Western Washington University. Burton's photographs are in the permanent collection of the Boise Art Museum and the Boise City Department of Arts & History.
Statement
I use photography to create implied narratives in the still life genre. My images are visual representations of psychological dynamics in my life and relationships, including conflicted feelings around photography and a career in contemporary art. At times I use my work to ask myself broader questions, such as “Where do I fit in?” and “What do I believe?”.
I am a white, female, upper middle-class American, living in the West in the fairly homogenous state of Idaho. I am a descendant of modern colonizers; Christian missionaries on both sides. My point of view includes living in a first world country with active, sometimes polarizing political discourse, and especially, the onset of the Information and the Digital Age (1990's). At age 15, I first logged-on to something new: the world wide web. I am privilege to many advantages due to my race, financial status, and physical appearance. All of these inform my work.
I use inanimate objects as characters on a stage to act out small plays, employing multiple photographic processes: iPhone pics, a DSLR camera, Fujifilm Instax prints, ai Photography, and silver gelatin paper negatives made with my large format 8x10 view camera. I mix and match methods, sometimes using one to document the other. As a motif, this can be placed on the heels of the Pictures Generation, including artists like Cindy Sherman and Sherry Levine who used photography to examine the strategies of representation itself, especially in media.
My creative voice blends conscious thought and subconscious rumblings. I tell my own stories. Sometimes they are true.