Through the Garden of Childhood consists of seventy photomontages, each paired with a 1000 word story on the facing page. The project is based on true-life experiences from my childhood, growing up in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the Capital of the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole).
The images are composited using photographs I have taken and vintage images I have collected. The stories portray the experiences, which shaped my imagination and ultimately the person I became. I am both a photographer and by profession a psychotherapist.
In this project I am after a rawness and a sense of living in process. I want to give visual form to the pain, joy, losses, damages and all those vague remnants that are at my core, which direct my mind’s eye. I strive for each image to provide an 'as if' experience of holding up a mirror and showing some small parcel of the internal remains of what it was to be my child self. I believe the images and the stories, alone or together, evoke the viewers’ own experiences and function as projectives and as vehicles of personal memory retrieval.
I am working conceptually, creating a world that speaks to another era and that extends beyond the realm of the camera. I strive to make images, which blur the line of real and not real and possess an otherworldly quality that will transcend into the mythic. It is our world yet it is not. Every image tells a story, but the story is different for every viewer. They are images that begin with the hint of a story yet are ambiguous enough to allow for multiple scenarios. I aim for there to be a sensation of looking into a mythic world, in which the viewers’ imagination is encouraged to wander.
Leslie Hall Brown is a fine art photographer and psychotherapist from the USA. Leslie received the "Prix de la Photographie, Paris" (Px3) 2016 Best New Talent Award and first place from the 2015 (IPA) International Photography Awards in the category of Fine Arts, Self Publish Book. In 2014 she was endowed with the Julia Margaret Cameron Award, was a finalist for the 2014 Clarence John Laughlin Award, and received gold, silver, and bronze medals in the 2014 "Prix de la Photographie, Paris" (Px3). Her work has been published in print magazines and in various online photography magazines. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, in the US, Germany, Mexico, Spain, Thailand, Georgia, England and France.
Awards Leslie Hall Brown is a fine art photographer and psychotherapist from the USA. Leslie's photography is included in the 2020 book "Criticizing Photographs", included in the 2017 IPA Best of Show, awarded the PX3 Best New Talent Award in 2016, awarded first place by IPA in 2015 for her self-published Fine Art book, endowed with the Julia Margaret Cameron Award in 2014, was a finalist for the 2014 Clarence John Laughlin Award, received gold, silver, and bronze medals in the 2014 "Prix de la Photographie, Paris" (Px3) and received a 1st place in the 2013 International Photography Awards. Her work has been published in the 2020 edition of "Criticizing Photographs", print magazines and in various online photography magazines. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, with shows in the US, Germany, Mexico, Spain and Georgia.
