- I'm Brooke Shaden, a fine art photographer.
And in this series, I'm sitting down
with artists to talk about greater creativity,
before taking them on a photo shoot to push their art
to new levels and capture an image that speaks
to the limits they want to break free from.
Jen Sulak is an experimental photographer
and she doesn't let any boundaries confine her.
Or it seems that way.
In this episode,
Jen shows us that no matter where you are on your journey,
the battle to confidently living life
on your terms always brings doubt.
She creates an image that directly confronts fear.
- I was the kind of person who moved from school to school.
I was the person who was always the new kid in class.
So I always being made fun of.
And I was like, well, now that I've grown up,
I'm like I don't want people to feel that way.
And I want people to know that it's okay to be themselves.
- You really are a steward of connection.
I mean, that's what you are.
You're looking at the creative community
and you're constantly thinking, how can I connect?
How can I invite people into my world?
- [Jen] Yeah.
- And then give them permission to live in their world.
- It helped me get outside of myself
and realize that there there's somebody else like me
that's sitting in the corner just dying to be connected.
- Yes.
- But sometimes you have to go
and grab their hand and say, come connect with me.
- Yeah.
- Or have that feeling of inclusivity, right?
Please come over here.
Give the opportunity.
- [Brook] Have you ever felt like you're not accepted?
- [Jen] Consistently, consistently.
I think that's what drives me.
- In what ways in your life have you not felt accepted
or have you not accepted yourself?
- I have felt in many ways,
let's say the arts community,
I have felt a little too weird for them.
There's a refinement that I feel that comes
with or an expectation of refinement of images.
- Yeah.
- And I choose not to live in that world.
- Gosh, that's so true.
Is it freeing for you to not live in that world?
- It is.
It is, but in the back of my mind, I'm always thinking
they're probably not thinking I'm a professional at all.
There's an expectation of you need to look a certain way.
You need to act a certain way.
You need to say certain things
or your image needs to look like this,
because the judges say so,
or the photography industry says so.
- Yeah.
- I just never subscribe to that.
- What is your normal creative process
when you think about making a picture?
- So sometimes I just grab the idea
and then I think about how I want to shoot it.
And if it's just like natural light
with a model or in my studio,
trying to do the remote or the self timer.
- Yeah.
- For this one in particular though
I pulled from a medium I'm familiar
with that I know would get the point across.
My creative process is a lot of play.
We are facing the fears, right?
So that means I have to do a self portrait
and it's not my favorite.
However, I have a good support system
and a safe space, right?
- [Brooke] Yeah.
- So I have this great ugly dress
that I've been putting people in and not just myself
but putting people in that it reflects light so well,
like even when the sun is gone
and there's no light left, it will still reflect light.
- [Brooke] Yeah.
- And it gives me the projectability,
which is where I'm going next is I'm gonna use projection
because I feel like the concept
that I'm going for is an intangible concept.
Fear, we can't always touch it.
- Yeah.
- But I feel like this is a good representation
of how fear could look as an intangible present.
- I love that.
- So what we're going to attempt to do is see how
this image looks on a body and particularly my white dress.
- Okay.
- I'm probably gonna use you as my tester
so I can know where to stand.
This is the face of fear.
As soon as I got the opportunity, I was like,
oh, this is the perfect,
perfect creepy thing to represent fear.
- Yeah.
- Because I don't wanna look at this.
- Yeah.
- And a lot of people may not wanna look at this,
but the part of it,
the process is looking at the hard things.
- Yeah.
- With this face looking thing
and how I want to present the concept.
- We're shooting with the Sony A7RIV
24-70 millimeter GM lens.
And I think this is perfect
for the space so that you can just zoom in, zoom out,
see what looks good and move quickly.
- I think wide was gonna be really good just based
upon the setup that we have right now
with this really cute little cube, almost like a cubicle.
- Yeah.
- And we've already got the projector set up
as wide as we want it. So I felt like, as I was looking
at the back of the screen, I was like,
ooh, this is the perfect thing
that we could kind of wrap together.
- Yeah.
- And I think this lens was perfect
because you can't move the camera in
'cause of the projector.
So you wouldn't want the tripod
and the camera shadow and stuff.
So you can just kinda keep it positioned
and just zoom in.
- [Jen] There we go.
That looks cool.
So yeah, I think I have a little bit farther out,
just a little.
That's actually kind of cool.
- I think this is amazing.
- And.
You wanna count it off?
- Yeah.
- You ready? - Yep.
One, two and three.
- [Brooke] Got it
- [Jen] Very quickly.
- [Brooke] Was there anyone that stuck out
just as an immediate reaction?
- These wall ones? - Yeah.
I love that one.
- That's really kind of cool.
Kind of like how a painter likes painting.
I really like painting it on.
- Oh, interesting.
So what is this brush?
- This is clarity.
- Oh.
- And it just gives to me like a little bit more contrast
and especially if there's a texture involved,
you can see it pop out just a little bit more.
- Yeah, I could see that right
across the sort of chest, nose area.
- It really, and I like, I just,
I do really like how this red is actually working for me.
Normally I do not like red in general,
especially red lighting, but this one works.
- It works.
- I feel like it's really bloody and it's really gross.
And I feel like that's the journey that I've been on.
It's been really bloody and really gross.
- Yeah. - And it hurts a lot.
- Oh, I like that.
- And I love how the white sucks all
of this up and then it still remains true to itself.
It really got the point across and not only to myself
but I know that we all experienced it together.
- Yeah.
- And we're embracing the fact
that art doesn't have to be beautiful to be good, you know?
And it's about looking at something deeper
and questioning, why do I not like this thing?
Or why do I feel like this this is frightening me?
And that's what we have to do with fear too.
We just have to look at ourselves and say
what is holding me back?
What is stopping me from being who I am?
- And until I discovered photography in general
as an art form,
I didn't know how to get
in contact with those things inside of me.
So I feel like art has always been there
as a friend to be a guide.
Over the last maybe eight to 10 years or so.
I've really discovered that my purpose really
is not only just connecting with other people,
but connecting with myself
and finding an inner freedom
that I didn't think I needed until now.
And I think when we are self aware enough to deal
with our issues and whatever they are,
good bad and indifferent, we're able to show other people.
And I think that's really where I'm at right now,
is my purpose is to show people
and not everybody's gonna hear it.
- Yeah.
- But some people will receive it
and they'll get it and they'll run with it on their own.
And I think that's the best part.
And that's the fulfilling part is that knowing
that other people are gonna go out there and be successful,
they're gonna be free.
They're gonna feel love.
And they're gonna be able to give love to other people