Brooke DiDonato (b. 1990) is a visual artist from Ohio now based in New York.
After studying photojournalism, DiDonato began developing a body of personal work questioning the notion of realism induced by the photographic medium. Her images propose scenes of everyday life distorted by visual anomalies. Extreme landscapes and domestic spaces stand in for the subconscious mind while bizarre scenarios call into question the boundaries of reality.
Her series of self-portraits “A House Is Not a Home” has been exhibited throughout the US (The Fence) and is included in the permanent collection at the Southeast Museum of Photography. Her work has also been exhibited internationally, most recently at the KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art in Berlin and Fotografiska in Stockholm.
Tiptoeing between reality and fantasy, photographer Brooke DiDonato’s images are unfolding stories that viewers find themselves in the middle of. Seeped in pastel colours, often featuring flowers or set in domestic settings, DiDonato’s photographs are nevertheless neither soothing nor uplifting, as there’s always something a little out of kilter, some minor inconsistency or dream-like bizarreness that subtly brings out the uncanny out of the banal. Exploring narratives about vulnerability, instability and self-destruction, her images challenge human perception: Rather than asking viewers to distinguish between fact and fiction, they urge them instead to merge them into a story of personal reflection.
“I like subverting the ordinary,” says DiDonato. “I think one of my favourite comments I’ve started receiving on my work in more recent years is, ‘I can’t figure out what’s going on here.’ I love that, because universal things like an empty field or a human body are transformed into something the viewer has to dissect a bit longer.”
After studying photojournalism, DiDonato began developing a body of personal work questioning the notion of realism induced by the photographic medium. Her images propose scenes of everyday life distorted by visual anomalies. Extreme landscapes and domestic spaces stand in for the subconscious mind while bizarre scenarios call into question the boundaries of reality.
Her series of self-portraits “A House Is Not a Home” has been exhibited throughout the US (The Fence) and is included in the permanent collection at the Southeast Museum of Photography. Her work has also been exhibited internationally, most recently at the KINDL Centre for Contemporary Art in Berlin and Fotografiska in Stockholm.
Tiptoeing between reality and fantasy, photographer Brooke DiDonato’s images are unfolding stories that viewers find themselves in the middle of. Seeped in pastel colours, often featuring flowers or set in domestic settings, DiDonato’s photographs are nevertheless neither soothing nor uplifting, as there’s always something a little out of kilter, some minor inconsistency or dream-like bizarreness that subtly brings out the uncanny out of the banal. Exploring narratives about vulnerability, instability and self-destruction, her images challenge human perception: Rather than asking viewers to distinguish between fact and fiction, they urge them instead to merge them into a story of personal reflection.
“I like subverting the ordinary,” says DiDonato. “I think one of my favourite comments I’ve started receiving on my work in more recent years is, ‘I can’t figure out what’s going on here.’ I love that, because universal things like an empty field or a human body are transformed into something the viewer has to dissect a bit longer.”
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Brooke DiDonato (b.1990) was born and raised in Ohio, now based in New York City. She graduated with a degree in photojournalism from Kent State University in 2012. Her work explores the complexity of human cognition, and what happens when psychological anomalies manifest in reality. By placing viewers in the context of a narrative with no clear beginning or end, she forces them to ask "How did we get here?", "What happens next?", And finally, "Can we go on?"
Her work has been featured by Vogue.it, PDN, Creative Quarterly, LM [Let's Motiv] Magazine, and iGNANT amongst others. Several works are included in the collection of the Southeast Museum of Photography.
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