Brooke DiDonato's Surrealist Photography

Original photo from Home — Brooke DiDonato. Wake-up Call, 2019

    One part of the contemporary art world that I haven't really explored is photography. While I enjoy photography as an art form, I haven't been made aware of many artists of today who use the camera to express their ideas. That is until I found Brooke DiDonato's magical, humorous, and surreal photos. I think her art truly represents what it feels like to be a person sometimes in the most absurd and hilarious ways. Beyond what she's telling us in her pictures, I love her choice of color palette and how it evokes so many feelings.

Original photo from Home — Brooke DiDonato.
Closure, 2016

    DiDonato's photos involve her or her friends assuming strange positions in a specific scene or with other people. They usually look very surreal, like everything seems based in reality until you look a few seconds longer. One of my favorite series of her's that I feel represents her style as a whole is Home. The setting of every photo is a house, either inside specific rooms, in the backyard, or within household objects. People pose calmly and almost awkward feeling at times, both physically and emotionally. For example, one of my favorite photos from the series is Closure, which involves a woman in a dress standing under a garage door that is closing on her head. Her neck is bent a complete 90 degrees, but she appears unbothered by the strange position she's found herself in. It seems like she is staring off into space, unaware of the painful event happening to her. Looking at this picture, I can feel her physical and emotional pain. It feels like those moments when you're dwelling on something unpleasant and can't seem to get out of your head while life carelessly continues around you. While it is emotional in some ways, I also can't help but chuckle at the image. It is so absurd and is something that would never happen in real life, but it also feels all too real. I love the simplicity of the picture and how much she gets across through such little action.

Original photo from Home — Brooke DiDonato.
Living Room, 2015

    Another wonderful picture from this series is Living Room. In this shot, a nude woman sits on a lounge chair, but underneath all of the cushions. She holds the bottom cushion on her lap while her face is obscured by a throw pillow. Besides the obvious weirdness of her sitting under the cushions, the position of her body seems technically relaxed, but nowhere near zen. Her feet spread out crooked on the floor and her hands lie opposite of each other, one flat to the cushion and one upright as if she was holding a glass. This shot feels like she is hiding to me, like those times when you are socializing with people but don't really want to be there. It also gives off a level of anxiety, like she should be relaxing in her living room after a long day but she can't let go of the stressful feelings she has. The photo has a very cool color palette compared to DiDonato's other work, which expresses both the relaxing emotion she should be feeling and the sad, anxious feelings she actually seems to be enduring. 

Original photo from Home — Brooke DiDonato.     
Am I Doing This Right, 2022

    Alongside Brooke's photos using scenery and props to tell a story, she also likes to distort the human body with poses, clothing, walls, or other bodies. I find these to be her most surrealist type of photos because bodies are such familiar, recognizable things that feel the most strange when distorted in such unimaginable ways. One image from the Home series that involves this side of her work is Am I Doing This Right, a picture of a woman doing a handstand with a dress on upside down and a wig teetering on her feet. Her buttocks become the cleavage in her dress, and her arms become her legs. I love how the title of this piece ties in with the meaning I gather from it, which is that being a person or a woman can feel like trying to play a role the correct way. No one knows what they're doing or if they are doing it right, but we all just try to fit in and make sense. In this picture, the woman is trying to look like a normal woman, but she's really not. Maybe she doesn't feel like a woman by the standards of other people and that's why she's asking if she's doing it right. This photo is very perfect and simple, both in color and composition. I love how bright and pink the image is, the room feels airy and feminine which adds to the meaning of the piece. 

    There are so many more photos I could talk about of Brooke DiDonato's because they are all so unique in subject matter and energy. I especially adore how she mixes intimate and darker feelings with such humorous situations in her photos. You can't help but feel her pictures at first glance, taking in the beautiful colors and the irony. I highly recommend looking over all of her photography, some honorable mentions I suggest are Force and Fiction, Two Sides to Every Story, and Good Mourning. 

Original photo from Elsewhere — Brooke DiDonato.
Point of Intersection, 2017