Pete Brook Archives
8 Posts
Pete Brook Photo June 4, 2014

Photographs of a Botched Execution Are as American as Apple Pie (GRAPHIC)

I’d like to tell you that such images are anomalous, but sadly that is not the case.

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Culture Focus Photo April 17, 2014

Drone Visuals, Selfies and Human Agency

The drone and the selfie inhabit different ends of an image spectrum. Both in terms of production and consumption, the selfie is all us and the drone is all them. We know us well. We don’t know them at all.

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Culture Focus Photo June 24, 2011

Catch-22 2011: Robbed Bank to Get Medical Care in Jail

Wouldn’t logic dictate that the medical, societal and legal systems that conspired to put a rational man in jail are in fact themselves illogical? Within the fabric of our society, there exists a vast gulf between the ways people interface with services and institutions. To me, that is crazy.

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Culture Focus Photo April 5, 2011

The Freedom Riders, the King Assassination and James Earl Ray’s Back

Shoved into a Shelby County Jail cell, Ray faces the reality upon him; the physical finality of confinement with nowhere to go

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Pete Brook Photo October 25, 2010

Massive Attack Distills GWOT/Wikileaks Apache Attack/Rendition Flights

The randomness of it all, sometimes seen through a gun-sight, recalls the Wikileaks Apache Attack video. But other things are going on too – burning oil fields (the first Gulf War); shattering buildings (9/11); Prestwick airport gets a mention (not the most well known airport but it was the...

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Photo August 15, 2010

What America Do You Wrap Yourself In?

Deborah Luster, 2002 This portrait by Deborah Luster was taken as part of her five year project, One Big Self  (1998-2002). Luster photographed prisoners in facilities across Louisiana and, for the most part, adopted a faux-tintype process by printing on metal plates. In the past, I have promoted Luster’s...

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Business Focus Photo May 20, 2010

Take That, Kneester-Hipsock American Apparel Formula!

The ease with which Norris and Sachse strip away the facade of fashion photography is alarming. If the use of the same playful and suggestive captions put alongside images of a woman - who is not the commonly seen shape - jolt us, could it be we harbor only...

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Pete Brook Photo May 7, 2010

War, PTSD, Soldiers, and Prison

Two recent stories have surfaced – one from either side of the Atlantic – which illustrate two common scenarios for men and women returning from service in war or conflict. The first is clinical depression in the form of PTSD; the second is clinical depression in the form of...

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