Spotlight: Jess Brohier
Naarm (Melbourne) based photographer, Jess Brohier lives most of her work life through the viewfinder photographing fashion, editorial and still life. This multi-talented creative combines her photography work with being the co-creative director of studio and production house, Alt-House, along with her business partner, Grace Moore.
Alt-House brings the creative community together to meet, create, collaborate and support each other. It's a photo studio and pop-up space, along with a co-working space for creatives as well.
We love your use of props and playful shapes in your photography, where do you draw inspiration from?
Thanks! Usually art, I'm often inspired by paintings and graphic design so I feel like maybe that creeps in a little to my image making. Particularly, Surrealist artists like Di Chirico, Dali and Magritte are some of my largest influences. Recently, I also had a one-month holiday in Europe and saw so many masterpieces I'd studied for years in real life, they were unbelievable. That slow process of working thought and meticulous consideration has been really a thinking point for me, and the way I want to make art moving forward. Much more art-directed and most importantly, conceptual. I've also had one of those years where a lot of curveballs have been thrown, so some of the newest personal work I've been making lately has been part of the way of navigating my healing process. So right now, I could say life's challenges are inspiring me.
Do you feel that growing up in Melbourne has influenced your work and style?
Not really..I've always been more inspired by mostly European and some American artists and followed their work, so I think that's really been influential in my choices when taking photos. I think if anything, the commercial photography industry in Australia has always felt quite outdated to me like we have always been a few solid years behind the rest of the world. So I have always tried to expand beyond this with my work, and create more vibrant, intentional and culturally based work than the work I saw coming out of Melbourne.
What's a piece of equipment that you can't shoot without?
My OG, first-ever 35mm camera. I learned how to shoot film in 2015 in NYC on this guy, and it has remained ever faithful. It was a gift from my lovely ex-partner, who also taught me how to shoot film. It's been with me on every overseas trip since and has never failed to deliver. It's a Nikon FM10 from 1994. I always make sure I have it with me on every shoot, and it takes great images for a lightweight super simple-to-use manual camera. The 28mm lens pretty much lives on it.
Any advice for people wanting to get into photography?
Just buy a normal camera, nothing super expensive to start with - buy it secondhand and do some reading on Ken Rockwell (IYKYK) and go on youtube and learn the basics of how to shoot on a dSLR. Watch some tutorials on how to use Lightroom for colour grading, it's a great super easy program for beginners. Then shoot anything, everything. That's literally all it takes.
