The strange familiarity of Brooke Didonato’s photography
Tiptoeing between reality and fantasy, the images of New York-based photographer Brooke Didonato show stories that, in some way, make the viewer feel part of them.
Images impregnated with pastel colors, often with flowers, nature or set in domestic settings, his photos are neither reassuring nor stimulating, as there always seems to be something a little out of place, some small incoherence or some dreamlike strangeness that, subtly, brings out something sinister within.
Vulnerability, instability, self-destruction,… are usually the themes that this photographer explores in her visual narratives. Intrinsic emotions to the human being and that are reflected in his photos defying human perception: It is as if Brooke, instead of asking the viewer to distinguish between reality and fiction, urged him to merge them into a story of personal reflection.
Motivated as an artist since elementary school, it is Brooke herself who comments that she ended up studying journalism because her mother told her that artists only earned money once they died, so she decided on journalism, a job that led her to photojournalism and little by little little to self-portraits as these allowed her to be less concerned with objectivity.
Flowers, which appear quite frequently in her work, whether real, as motifs or in prints, symbolize a variety of meanings that, in the photographer’s own words, can be:
“love, mourning, purity,…, meanings that change with the context and, to which, I like to find new ways to incorporate them”.
If you want to know more about the work of this author, you can do it on his instagram:
