Brennan Booker is a photographic artist living and working in Columbia, South Carolina. His work focuses on the interactions between queer identity, and the Southern physical and social landscape. If he’s not taking photos you can find him taking an afternoon snooze with his dog Kodak until golden hour.

Booker won the Fujifilm Students of Storytelling competition for his work exploring “the relationship between industrialization and whiteness, and how land ownership and use affects the way our communities are built.”

Fujifilm created the contest to identify the next generation of U.S. storytellers, and to provide them with Fujifilm X Series or GFX System gear to bring their vision to life.

Rangefinder: What interests you as a storyteller? Which stories are you drawn to? 

Brennan Booker: The stories I’m interested in are always the ones I have some form of a personal connection to, whether it’s my mom giving me my very first camera or my teachers who have become mentors and dear friends helping me find my way as an artist. Right now I’m really interested in the idea of reshaping narratives we may already be familiar with. My last big project, Honeysuckle, focused on re-centering the idea of southern masculinity through a queer lens. Those sort of acts of repositioning and perhaps even a little rebellion I think really speak to my personality. 

Rf: What stories do you want to share through your work?

BB: I view my position as a photographer as someone who can synthesize information and transform it with a camera. I’m also constantly concerned with the idea of the “viewer” and how he or she brings their own thoughts, ideas and predispositions to my images. This is especially critical with the work I’m making right now, which deals with the social consciousness of being white in the Midwest. Time after time I’ve been drawn back to the idea of where we are and how that in turn informs the way we see/navigate through the world. Place and identity are such interesting concepts to me because their edges are so ephemeral. They are so hard to lock down which is why I think photography is sort of the perfect medium for trying to do it. There is a really beautiful tension between the inherent realism of photography, and the magic of how the photographer and camera transform the way we can see something.  

Rf: Describe the evolution of your style and approach. How has it changed over time?

BB: Over time, I’ve become more and more concerned with making sure that empathy is a cornerstone of the work that I make. As a general thought, though, I think that the world needs more empathy. The more I learned about photography, the more aware I became of its connectedness to colonialism, racism, homophobia, etc. But I also became more aware of the incredible power of a photograph to connect us across space and time. It’s these kinds of considerations that I think should drive the kinds of work we make. The camera is an unbelievably powerful tool, but part of what makes me an artist is knowing how to use that tool.  

Rf: What are the key things you have learned or done that have helped you advance your career since you began shooting? 

BB: Something that I’ve learned, and something I now teach my students is to use your photographs as a way of giving back. I’m sure I probably sound like a broken record, but the personal connections you make while photographing are everything, both in your career and within the photo community. The people I work with aren’t just clients; they’re also people I care about. My students/professors aren’t just people I teach and learn from, they’re people I have a personal investment in. And I truly think people see that kind of energy.  

Rf: What is the most helpful piece of advice you’ve received and followed?

BB: I’ve gotten so much good advice from so many people it would be hard to quantify what the best piece of advice was. I think the thing that immediately jumps out was when my professor Walker Pickering asked me during a critique, “Why should I care?” And at first it stung a little; those are tough words. But he was completely right. In a way he was telling me to expand my work outside of just my own view and intentions and remember that I wasn’t the only person who was going to look at these photos.  

Rf: How has photographic education affected your career and development as a photographer?

BB: I think the sort of network I’ve developed has been one of the most invaluable things I’ll take away from school. So much of the photo world is rooted in who you know and I’d like to think I’ve been very lucky to meet some really amazing people.   

Rf: How does your personal background affect your photography? 

BB: I feel like my background is a sort of inescapable influence in my photography. It is after all, the way that we view and approach literally everything. I really try to strive for authenticity in the work that I make; to do that I have to really dive deep and reflect. I am a 6-foot-tall, fat white gay man who grew up with three brothers and a mom and a dad. And literally all those things have influenced my style either directly or indirectly.  

Rf: Much of your work explores the relationship between humans and their environments, what drew you to this type of storytelling?  

BB: I grew up in a military family. I moved around a lot and spent most of my formative years living outside the United States on a military base in Germany. I was born in Texas but never quite felt “from” there. I’ve lived in South Carolina the longest but now I’m in the Midwest. I think I’ve always been in some form of transition, either physically or personally. Because of this, I think my photography serves as a sort of searching to find where I feel like I belong. A big part of the work I made in my undergrad was about carving out a space for people I identified with. And this is still something I think I’m doing today, just maybe in a more abstract way.  

Rf: Can you tell us about your submission to Fujifilm’s Students of Storytelling program?  

BB: The project that I’m working on with Fujifilm really came out of a necessity to reflect on myself and the world around me. Where did I fit in the world and where did my position in the world put me in relationship to others? In the U.S. it really seems like we are on the crest of an incredible tidal wave of change. Change to our consciousness, to our structures, and to our way of life. For me, I felt the responsibility to take a look at those things and how they are evolving.  

Rf: What works have you produced with your new Fujifilm systems?  

BB: I’m a hyper-analytical person, so this project is developing very slowly for me. This is really stepping outside of my comfort zone in terms of content because this isn’t a portrait driven body of work. I’m really excited by these images I took the day after the 4th of July. I think the after-effects of the holiday, and the sort of hangover of rambunctious patriotism is a more truthful depiction of things. I also really love the visual metaphors of the marks left on the ground, and the garbage left out to be whisked away and destroy our environment in a landfill on the outskirts of town.  

Rf: Where do you see your work going from here?  

BB: I’m not sure if I can fully answer this right now, but I can tell you it involves a lot more looking, a few more podcasts, and a lot more 1-star images in light room than 5-star ones.  

Rf: Which brand, media outlet or agency is your ideal client? And why? 

BB: I’d love to work with a publisher who would be interested in turning Honeysuckle into a monograph. It has always been my dream to see my work printed as a book and I think it is ready for the world to see it in that format. So, if you’re a publisher reading this, and you want to tell a new story of queer Southernness and masculinity, shoot me an email.

Visit the official Fujifilm Students of Storytelling site for more information about the complete program. Follow @brennan.booker to stay up to date with Brennan Booker.