Elliott Jerome Brown Jr

Lives and works in Queens, NY, USA

Artist statement

My photographic works visualize moments of contemplation, self-possession, and intimacy. Depicted within domestic environments, pictured individuals are often obscured or located residually. While the photographs tend to be made informally, the resulting ambiguity allows the picture plane a narrative multiplicity that engages and transcends its biographical origin. The dimensional elements, in addition to the caption text, assist in situating a photograph within and alongside multiple contexts, effectively extending the initial frame of the camera. Similar to how experiences are layered in memory, I consider how a singular moment may be recontextualized to glean something comprehensive, new, or unplanned for. By privileging the interiority of individuals and communing groups, my work is invested in how people make space and less how they become clear to others. Using the pictured environment or the margins of the frame itself to reference an individual, my photographs gesture between a curiosity and refusal.

Artwork