Complete List of Projects (The Site Table of Contents)
My photographic artwork tends to divide itself into themed projects, each exploring an idea, place, or vision. These days, my primary medium is Kokoro, a periodic, anthology-style PDF with imaginem vitae (pictures of life, short sketches, or image-essays) — free to download for viewing on your tablet/computer/phone. Below, you will also find projects using several types of media presentation — printed folios or chapbooks, free downloadable PDF eBooks or media monographs, videos, or other media.
Comments? Questions? Feedback? Email Brooks
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This is a new series about my "also-rans" — photographs I was motivated to make, but somehow or other fell short of my intentions. (Usually because of some bonehead mistake I made.) None of these I would consider my best, but with each there are lessons to be learned, lessons I hope are worth sharing, so I will.
A new post every Mon-Fri. A "daily dose" of creative learning.
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An Image Journal with Commentary, Meditation, Philosophy,
and Unanswered Questions
- A periodic PDF, designed for landscape-orientation viewing
- Using a 4:3 aspect ratio for tablets like the iPad or Samsung S9, but fully compatible with phones/computers/laptops, too!
- More about Kokoro and the philosophy behind this project
Includes a single project in five parts:
172 - Silver Thaw
The Chaos of the storm
Crystal Trees
Ice Skies
The Road Home
Shelter from the Storm
A single PDF,
39 pages,
53 mB
Perpetually available, always free
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Kokoro previous issues
Always free, perpetually available for download
There are currently 31 issues of Kokoro that have been published over the last 8 years. In total, these 31 issues include 161 "sketches."
All issues of Kokoro are free digital media publications.
Download page
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Backstage Kokoro
A "behind-the-scenes" look at selected images in my Kokoro project
Comments about content, photographic notes, and creative process. Includes EXIF data for each image plus original digital captures (downsized for the web) to illustrate the "before" and "after" of post-processing.
This stand-alone web presentation is modeled after my New 100 Prints Project that concluded in 2009. It uses the Web module in Lightroom to create the entire presentation, pulling all the EXIF data, commentary text, and links from the meta data of each image.
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Response to Acadia
LensWork Bonus Edition #001
In January 2024, we launched a new monthly digital publication, the LensWork Bonus Editions. This new publication is available for free to subscribers of LensWork or members of LensWork Online. We are making issue #001 available here, too, for everyone.
Download link
60 pages containing four small projects
65 mB single PDF file
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Made of Steel Tablet Edition
Newly designed PDF specifically for iPad and Android Tablets
From my grandfather I learned to love the polish of long-used tools and the unmistakable aroma of oil and fresh metal filings. I can still smell his shop and hear his voice – thick with his old-world Armenian accent – echo in the tall ceilings. I guess he also taught me to love the stories and manners of old, greasy machine shop men. Details …
Free digital media publications: New 100-page Tablet Edition PDF
96-page softcover book, $18.95, limited quantities still available
Also available as numbered, handmade print collectibles: 12-print Folios
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Hokusai in the Rocks
Audio introduction to this unusual project.
I found myself wandering the dry and dusty canyons of southern Utah, thinking about the Japanese woodblock printer Hokusai and his famous print, The Great Wave. There it was, up on the canyon wall, that massive wave captured in ancient stone — or so it seemed to my eidetic vision. Details …
Free digital media publications: Computer or Tablet PDF
Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 11-print folio
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Light, Glorious Light
From the depths of space, the Sun launches its energy pulses from every millimeter of its surface, casting bits and waves of itself in an ever-growing sphere of energy. For some 8 minutes this invisible energy traverses the cold and empty regions of space until it encounters some object that makes that energy manifest — a particle of atmospheric dust, a dusty photographer’s warm skin, or the massive, silent face of an ancient, dusty wall of rock — and suddenly there is light. Details …
Free digital media publications: Computer PDF | iPad/Android PDF
Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 15-print Folio
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Winter Trees VII
The seventh of an annual series, each with five images of winter trees
The skeletal complexity of winter trees is one of their primary characteristics — one that I could stare at for hours on end. One that I have stared at for hours on end. Tendrils, veins, pathways, neurons, delta patterns, roots. Not one single straight line anywhere. Details …
Free digital media publications: Computer PDF | iPad/Android PDF
Also available as numbered, handmade print collectibles: 5-print Folio
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The Corn Winnower
of Xiang Sha Wan
From the Sketches series "Stories from the Middle Kingdom"
When I think of camels, I think of dunes and heat and thirst. At the outpost of Xiang Sha Wan near the headwaters of the Yellow River in Inner Mongolia, we found plenty of camels at the edge of the massive Gobi Desert. We also found a bitter winter wind that bit man and beast to the bone — instantly freezing every drop of water.
Free digital media publications: PDF eBook
Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 10-page Chapbook
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Market Day, Baotou, China, January 2011
A video example using environmental audio
I've assembled some images made during a recent trip to China into a simple, uncomplicated slide show to demonstrate the power of simple environmental audio. I encourage you to review the slideshow with your audio muted, then again with the audio playing. It's an amazing difference! If you are a photographer, start capturing audio to go with your images. It's fun and and incredibly powerful addition to a presentation of still images.
Available as free computer/tablet e-media: PDF computer media eBook | Video
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Suspended Without Wings
from the Sketches series
When I was a boy, no doubt influenced by the superheroes of my boyish fictions, I dreamt of flying. It was a difficult lesson for a young boy to learn; that the immutable laws of physics – gravity – could not be overcome by even the most fervent dreams and wishes of fanciful youth. I know, there are balloons and airplanes and helicopters – but I wanted wings.
Free digital media publications: PDF eBook | Android Monograph
Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 10-page Chapbook
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On the White Wall
from the Sketches series
Every white wall starts as a coat of clean, pristine paint — and the hopes of its painter that the purity will last. But as every photographer knows, a perfectly pure-white object is a blank spot. Without some break in the purity, without some flaw in the surface or some texture in the blank, a white wall is perfectly invisible, perfectly featureless, without character, without life.
Free digital media publications: Layered Computer PDF eBook Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 10-page Chapbook
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Uncle Kenny
from the Sketches series "Stories from My Ancestors"
Everyone has an “Uncle Kenny” — or should have, a man who works hard — with his hands — his entire life. His hands reminded me of his old tools — bent and scarred, a testament to years of use. Details …
Free digital media publications: PDF eBook | Web presentation
Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 10-page Chapbook
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Fog in the Hills and Aits
from the Sketches series
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls deified among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. (From the opening page of the 1852 novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens) Details …
Free digital media publications: PDF eBook | Web presentation Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 10-page Chapbook
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Hilo Palms
from the Sketches series
I have never been a great fan of palm trees. In my limited experience, palms were stick-like weeds with crudely-formed, tufted tops found along the freeways of southern California. Clearly, I had never been to Hawaii. Recently, during my first visit to those balmy islands, I learned how limited my experiences had been. There they were — the palms! — overflowing with life in a ravine near Hilo. What complex beauty! They were jazz brought to life in an explosion of jiggity details and repeating, graceful arcs that make a chord of wonder for a photographer’s eye. Details …
Free digital media publications: PDF eBook | Web presentation Also available as numbered, handmade print collectibles 10-page Chapbook
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Worlds Within Worlds
from the Sketches series
Learning photography by photographing through the microscope, I was struck how the vast cosmos looked so remarkably like what I was photographing in the tiny worlds in a drop of pond water. Seeing photographs of the great nebulae through the telescope reminded me of the amoeba under the coverslip. These similarities gave scientific testament to the words of Lao Tzu that, "The great Tao flows everywhere, to the left and to the right." Everywhere, including the cosmically vast and the microscopically small. Science, photography, Zen. Weaving these threads has been the constant theme of my artmaking ever since. Details …
Free digital media publications: PDF eBook | Web presentation Also available as numbered, handmade print collectibles:
8-page Chapbook | 10-print Folio
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The Winter Light of Lvzu Temple
from the Sketches series "Stories from the Middle Kingdom"
It never occurred to us to question the sanity of visiting inner-Mongolia in the dead of winter. Sure, it would be cold, but the photographic possibilities promised to be a warming counter to the bitter winds. For days, we’d photographed in the freezing Gobi desert. When someone offhandedly mentioned the ancient Lvzu Temple in the city of Baotou, we jumped at the urban opportunity. Details …
Free digital media publications: PDF eBook | Web presentation Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible Chapbook
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Longquan Swords
from the Sketches series "Stories from the Middle Kingdom"
I had an opportunity to photograph the one of the famed Longquan sword makers in Lishui, China. I wish I could tell you that they were making swords of legendary fame. I don’t know, and I suspect there was an element of the tourist trade involved in their production. Be that as it may, I can assure you they cut with ease — a testament I can verify by how easily one cut my finger before I realized just how sharp it really was. Details …
Free digital media publications: PDF eBook | Web presentation Also available as numbered, handmade print collectibles 10-page Chapbook
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The Fisherman with One Eye
from the Sketches series "Stories from the Middle Kingdom"
As I photographed the group, the one-eyed fisherman suddenly posed as though he knew this was a moment of importance. He stared directly into the lens and waited for me to finish making the photograph. We smiled and both nodded, the only language we shared. I wanted to know his story, but all I have is his portrait. Details …
Free digital media publications: PDF eBook | Web presentation Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 6-page Chapbook
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Living Landscape
Chinese classic poetry combined with fan-shaped landscape images. From my exhibition in Xiang Sha Wan, China in 2010. Details …
Free digital media publications: 63-page Computer PDF or iPad PDF
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Winter Trees VI
The sixth of an annual series, each with five images of winter trees
This year, Boreas (the Greek God of Winter) must have been feeling particularly spry. These three folios were photographed and produced from a singular and spectacular storm the morning of February 23, 2011. Details …
Free digital media publications: PDF eBook | iPad Monograph Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 5-print Folio
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Winter Trees V
The fifth of an annual series, each with five images of winter trees
Atop each and every limb and twig an outline of white grew, poised, balancing, waiting. Mid-morning arrived with a stiff winter wind. The snow crystals first blew off the twigs, then the branches, then the limbs. Each gust created a burst of cascading snow, driven down in small avalanches. By late afternoon, it was over and the winter trees were once again black outlines against a grey sky. Details …
Free digital media publications: PDF eBook | iPad Monograph
Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 5-print Folio
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Winter Trees IV
The fourth of an annual series, each with five images of winter trees
All five images in this folio were photographed in a single session the morning of February 23, 2011. I awoke at 5am to a dark, heavy rain. An hour later, the cold had descended. Snowflakes started piling up more rapidly than I'd ever seen in my life. Details …
Free digital media publications: PDF eBook | iPad Monograph
Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 5-print Folio
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Photographing in Japan:
Rikuzen Tomiyama
A short video made on location before the 2011 tsunami
The small oyster farming community of Rikuzen Tomiyama was one of those many place so devistated by the 2011 tsunami that struck the north coast of Japan. This video was recorded there just 9 months before the devestation as I photographed this quaint fishing village.
Free digital media publication Video
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Uchiwa-e
The uchiwa, or rigid paper fan, is a practical device in the heat of Japan. Over the centuries, uchiwa have become an art form with a charm all their own. The paper prints that are used to make fans are called uchiwa-e, the suffix indicating the print itself.
In the fall of 2009, I traveled to Japan with an experiment in mind of making photographs for the uchiwa format. I now understand why this format suited the Japanese printmakers so well; everywhere I turned I found subjects ideally suited to the fan-shaped image. Details …
Free digital media publications: 79-page Computer PDF or iPad PDF Also available as numbered, handmade print collectibles: Six Folios
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Tangerine Gifts
In 1990, David Grant Best and I photographed in the northern region of rural Japan known as Tohoku. From our experiences and photography during that trip, we produced in 1992 a handmade artist’s book called Tangerine Gifts.
Now, using recently rediscovered original letterpress text signatures, this LensWork Special Editions folio recreates Tangerine Gifts in the new “folio format.” As a folio, eighteen of the best images from this trip to Tohoku have been selected for this reissue, produced from new scans of the original negatives. Details …
Free digital media publications: 27-page Computer PDF or iPad Monograph Also available as anumbered, handmade print collectible 18-print Folio
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In 1986, I committed myself to a photography project I called The One Hundred Prints Project. This project —The New 100 Prints Project — was inspired by the first one. Again, it is a bit of a motivational construct. By committing myself to post a new image every third day for a year, I hoped to push myself to create 100 new images. "Artistic discipline" is a bit of an oxymoron, but being an artist and not producing work is just plain moronic. This project, completed in just 9 months, is a testament to what can accumulate if one does a small thing with regularity over time.
Free digital media publications: Web presentation
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Winter Trees III
The third of an annual series, each with five images of winter trees
All five images in this folio were photographed in a single day following a heavy winter storm in December of 2008. A two week stretch of cold, arctic air covered our normally balmy corner of the Pacific Northwest, followed by a typical, wet southwester. Over a foot of snow fell in Anacortes! This is not a particularly unique weather event for so many regions, but here, where I live, it was almost unheard of. Details …
Free digital media publications: Computer PDF or iPad PDF
Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 5-print Folio
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Silva Lacrimosa
Out photographing with a friend, we stumbled into the remains of the fourth largest forest fire in the history of National Forests — the Thirty-Mile Fire in the Okanogan forest.
I found myself more and more saddened by the story I began to feel in the charred remains of the forest fire. I knew I was simply projecting my human emotions on the forest, a philosophical flaw that is fallacy. Nonetheless, as I photographed a drip of sap on the sooted bark, I began to cry. The tears of the forest were flowing through me. Details …
Free digital media publications: iPad PDF or Android PDF
Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 11-print olio
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Winter Trees II
The second of an annual series, each with five images of winter trees
The images in this folio were photographed on a single, glorious day of sun and snow, in March of 2008. A bright, clear sun, perfectly muted by high thin clouds, a sparkling, snow-covered landscape, dry pavement, a warm breeze, and no schedule nor obligations. I poked along down Highway 395 from Pendleton, Oregon to Burns, Oregon and drank it in, a refreshment that only such light, landscape, and fresh desert and mountain air can provide. Details …
Free digital media publications: Computer PDF or iPad PDF
Also available as numbered, handmade print collectibles: 5-print Folio
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Wakarimasen
For a few years in my youth, I studied Oriental calligraphy — Chinese and Japanese, in particular. I love the dance of the brush, the shapes that are both words and graphics that capture the motion of the master calligrapher's hand. These graffiti shapes on the wall of Fort Worden reminded me of the calligraphy I studied — and like the calligraphy, they seemed to be words that I could not read. Hence, wakarimasen — Japanese for "I don't understand." Details …
Free digital media publications: iPad PDF or Android PDF or Video
Also available as a numbered, handmade print collectible 16-print Folio
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October Seas
This portfolio is the result of a few incredible winter days in late October 2005 from the rugged central Oregon coastline. I've tried for over 20 years to photograph that silvery light in the surf that bathes the ocean on stormy days, but I've never been successful. During these three glorious day, however, the light and sea, the clouds and even a flock of birds, smiled on me. The twelve images in this portfolio were photographed in the short span of one weekend. Details …
Free digital media publications: iPad PDF or Android PDF
Also available as numbered, handmade print collectibles: 12-print Folio
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Hope Eternal
In North Dakota there is wind. On occasion, it stops blowing for a while, but not long. It blows day and night, spring and fall. It's a hard land to make a living on. This keeps many from trying, but not all. There are those who believe they are stronger than the wind, stronger than the winters, stronger than the elements that fight them day and night. To them, hope springs eternal.
Free digital media publication Video
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Bass Mood
Near my home in Anacortes is the Padilla Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. Fancy name for a giant low-tide mud flat. It's a great place to be a bird or a mollusc. The mud is dark, wet, slippery, sloppy. In the rain at low tide, it's a droning bass tone . . . which inspired this short video. Runs 5:11.
Free digital media publication Video
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Winter Trees I
The first of an annual series, each with five images of winter trees
This folio consists of five images — admittedly, some of the best images from years of photographing winter trees. I've "culled the archives" to start this series of folios with an opening crescendo. Details …
Free digital media publications: Computer PDF or iPad PDF
Also available as numbered, handmade print collectibles: 5-print Folio
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