Brian Kosoff
Limited Edition Archival Pigment and Archival Carbon Pigment Prints
Portfolios
My intent is to make photographs that often do not look like photographs. I want my images to be visually compelling, through beauty, drama or emotion and to convey to the viewer that the moment captured was special. I don’t want to be limited to only what is there but what could be there. The early landscapes I produced were exclusively B&W and reliant on the interaction between light and the elements to create depth, mood and dimension. As light can convey emotion, similar to how candlelight creates the feeling of intimacy or romance, I carefully time my photographs for the most compelling natural light that conveys my feelings while capturing the scene.
One of the big differences between the B&W and color work is how I address time and motion differently between the genres. In the B&W portfolios, the camera is still and often it’s the world that is moving, whether it’s clouds, water or stars, as in the “Night” portfolio. In the color work often it’s the camera that’s moving in a still world. An example of this is the “Blurred Lines” series whose title is both literal as well as metaphorical. In that series I am attempting to blur the lines further between a photograph and an illustration or painting. This series also starts to reveal my interest in abstract expressionism, specifically color field work like that of Rothko and Diebinkorn. The influence of that school can be seen as well in the “Pacifica” series, a portfolio of ocean views taken from the window of our home in Pacifica, California. And the “Paint” series which consists of images in which graffiti has been repeatedly painted over and has unintentionally produced an abstract expressionist result.