PHOTOGRAPHY, PHOTOJOURNALISM

SHANE BROWN

Shane Brown is a photographer and filmmaker documenting the present-day cultural landscape of the American West, experimenting with representations of time and motion, and working on a variety of film projects. Over the last two decades, Brown has pursued freelance and creative projects in documentary and experimental photography and cinematography.

Photography clients have included Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, FX Networks, Indigenous Global Coordinating Group for the United Nations World Conference for Indigenous Peoples, First Americans Museum, and This Land Press, among others.

He has lent his technical and artistic ability to cinematography projects such as Love and Fury (2020), Mekko (2015), and This May Be the Last Time (2014), all feature-length films by director Sterlin Harjo. Other film clients and projects include Southern Living, Bob Dylan Archive, Woody Guthrie Center, Choctaw Cultural Tourism, Goff (2019), America Divided: Who Controls the Land? (2018), Along the Chaparral: Memorializing the Enshrined at Riverside National Cemetery (2018), Chilocco: Through the Years (2018), Mankiller (2018), and several of director Brad Beesley's films, including Fathers of Football (2018), Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo (2009), Okie Noodling II (2008), and Flaming Lips: UFOs at the Zoo (2007).

Brown's documentary photography projects include “In the Territories,” views of Oklahoma, its convoluted histories and their present day manifestations; “Life Out There,” an exploration of the Atomic Age-based mythology of the American West; and, “Great Plains Schema,” a survey of the ethos, archetypes, and myths of the Great Plains region. When making images in the regions he knows best, Brown harvests scenes based on knowledge and learning. This process is often cyclical, with each turn refining the original vision and leading to further study, exploration, and conscientious image-making, editing, and sequencing. Brown's projects reveal that the American West, Oklahoma, and the Great Plains region—in spite of or, perhaps because of, their mythos—have not escaped the 21st century any more than they did the 19th, 16th, or 5th centuries. Other creative projects include “Continuous Now,” which blends multiple images of the same scene varied in time, position, and distance to create a kaleidoscopic effect, and Document For An Anonymous Indian, Brown's experimental film based on a poetry book by the same name. Brown has exhibited widely across Oklahoma and his photographs can be found in the permanent collections of the Fidelity Investments Boston, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Great Plains Art Museum, and the Oklahoma State Art Collection.

Brown has taught as Visiting Assistant Professor of Photography at Hendrix College and Adjunct Professor of Photography at the University of Tulsa and OSU Institute of Technology and is a former contributing editor to Oklahoma Today magazine and This Land Press. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Photography from the University of Oklahoma, a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies from Oklahoma State University, and an Associates in Applied Science of Photography Technology from Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology.