Article on Me

Generative Art as Figure Photography: Bil Brown's Underground Aesthetic - Article by Jamie McDermond

This academic paper was written by one of my favorite models and is being reworked for further publication. I found it charming, and also, she got a lot of the things that I could not put into words. Sometimes critics aren't all that critical. Thank you Jamie! - bb

I chose to write about Bil Brown for several reasons. Most obviously, I enjoy the aesthetics of his work; I appreciate the way his subjects interact and contrast with their environments. More than the visual, however, I appreciate a quality that many artists don’t carry- a complete lack of pretension about his work and ideas. This is an aspect I couldn’t fully grasp if I had never worked with him artistically. Having modeled with him several times, however, I can say that his photos are almost always a collaboration between model and photographer, rather than a pure manipulation of a model to suit a photographer’s concept.

Bil is not formally trained as an artist- he began his career in the arts as a writer, belonging to Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, CO. As part of that MFA program, he taught himself early versions of Photoshop, Illustrator, and Pagemaker, making DIY zines, posters and flyers. In the mid 90s, after returning to Louisville, he began working at Kinko’s and spending a lot of time on the internet. “Even then,” he says, “I realized that the web was a much easier publishing venue. While working at Kinko’s I was getting to know the fledgling web business from the ground up… it was a start.”

After leaving Kinko’s, he left the country as well and spent some time in Prague, working on various film sets and slowly integrating himself in to the underground art scene there. He found himself greatly inspired by the attitudes of artists in Eastern Europe, where an artist could expect to be killed simply for expressing themselves- “They still did it. They weren’t crazy, they were heroes… my inspiration has always been artists who are heroic. That would die, or have, to do what they do.”

When it comes to his own art, Bil has no trouble admitting what might be shortcomings or advantages, depending on your opinions. “I have worked in the visual medium for over fifteen years and I really have no idea about the theory behind what I do. It’s intuitive or informed only as much as questions that I can ask and have answered… skilled, but only at what I have bothered to know.” He names the internet as one of his main resources for inspiration, networking, and publication. Using early versions of Macromedia Flash, he learned to “apply randomness and make it part of the creative process,” and also took part in a friend’s website called Dreamless. Dreamless was one of the first social networking sites on the internet, before sites like Myspace or Facebook were even conceived. Artists, designers and writers were invited to share and communicate in forums which grew to over 2000 members. Bil says it was Dreamless that made him realize that “commercial work can be artistic,” a statement which still seems to drive the photos he produces.

For the purposes of this paper, I’ve chosen to focus mainly on the work Bil has done of his own accord; doing what you want because you want to seems incredibly important to him as an artist. He shoots digitally in color, and most of his pieces have an editorial-type look as described by ‘Currents- Contemporary Directions in the Visual Arts’. His photos are usually shot straight-on or on just slight angles, focusing on the model’s body and clothing as the main part of the composition. One of the things I enjoy most about his work, and the thing that got me interested in modeling as a creative outlet is his use of the body as a medium- the interactions of a model’s lines, shapes and angles with her surroundings. He also utilizes digital editing tools like Photoshop, but never to the extent of utter distortion. In ‘Pixel Surgeons- Manipulation of the Figure in Photography,’ Martin Dauber argues that “the freedom to bring an inner vision to life without having to manipulate the live situation ironically gives a more natural fluidity, a more seamless transition from inspiration to final product.” Bil’s work embodies this statement in that the editing he does with a shot tend to make that shot better, a more comprehensive piece of art, rather than just another photoshopped snapshot. Some of the manipulations he makes are extremely subtle- a slight tweak of hue or contrast, as in ‘Anne Bonny- New Edit.’ Other images are edited to a dreamlike state, like ‘Runway Illustration.’ Regardless of the amount or type of editing done, he never fully distorts a model or her body, and to that extent, even Bil’s most edited photos are still photography rather than digital artwork.

I find myself at somewhat of a loss to place Bil in a particular ‘style’ or ‘movement’ category. His use of his models as subjects seems to fall in line with Francis Pluchof’s definition of ‘body art’ as “the multiplicity of practices which use the body as material and photography as its main form of communication,” but beyond this broad definition, I think Bil is still developing as a photographer. He is also very open to ideas from his models- his subjects have often done their own makeup, hair and wardrobe, adding to the sense of collaboration between photographer and subject. He has a certain vision for his shoots, but each model carries out that vision in her own unique way. When it comes to choosing models, Bil admits to being bored with the tall, slender model stereotype he usually works with through agencies. He enjoys working with ‘alternative’ looking models- tattoos, piercings, dyed hair, and various weights and sizes of models are prevalent in his portfolio. There also seems to be a running theme of interesting textures and patterns in his models’ clothing and surrounding environment- I think he likes to work with models that have an interesting sense of style and a love for creating texture. He also tends to enhance these textures in his editing processes, often upping the contrast to augment the shadows and relationships between different materials. This currently unnamed movement of internet- and digitally-driven art is succinctly described by Larry Reid in ‘The Rise of Underground Art’- “You basically have a bunch of artists who exist in tangential relation to the art world status quo and the mainstream of commerce, but who have chosen to occupy a common space for their own idiosyncratic ways of seeing… I think of them as a gathering in some hypothetical barroom, a drunken, querulous, misanthropic lot, busy drawing on their napkins and demanding someone change the radio station.”

Asking an artist to define what their work means is a tricky business. What you want a piece to say and how another person actually interprets it do not always line up perfectly. In Bil’s case, either he has done a great job or he was purposely ambiguous when speaking about the ‘message’ of his photography. “I would hope that it says that I respect in an almost revered way the power of the image and the projection of self… I want both the participant and viewer to find what they want to. Enforced chaos. Freed restraint.” In my own art class critiques, I often feel like ‘letting the viewer find what they want’ is nothing more than a contrived way of getting out of making an actual statement. In Bil’s case, I think this sentiment matches perfectly with his down-to-earth attitude about art in general. It strikes me that ‘down-to-earth’ is an odd term to describe an artist- most artists depend to some extent on impracticality and idealism as driving forces. I can certainly see those aspects of Bil’s work, but he executes those principals with more humor and practicality than many of the artists I run across. One of his last statements exemplifies that humor and is the perfect ending: “I never again want to work for assholes, or sell anything to assholes. I guess that limits who I work for and with. Of course, I might in fact be an asshole. But that’s okay, I’ll never know.”


















Dauber, Martin. Pixel Surgeons- The Manipulation of the Figure in Photography. Great Britain, Octopus Publishing 2005
Pluchof, Francis. A History of 20th Century Art. Beaux Arts Magazine, July 2001
Reid, Larry. The Rise of Underground Art. Ignition Publishing, 2004.
Smagula, Howard. Currents- Contemporary Directions in the Modern Arts. New Jersey: Prentice Hall 1983
Smagula, Howard. Currents- Contemporary Directions in the Modern Arts. New Jersey: Prentice Hall 1983
Dauber, Martin. Pixel Surgeons- The Manipulation of the Figure in Photography. Great Britain, Octopus Publishing 2005
Pluchof, Francis. A History of 20th Century Art. Beaux Arts Magazine, July 2001.
Reid, Larry. The Rise of Underground Art. Ignition Publishing 2004.