Audrey Brown

Mystery # 3
color photograph
11 x 14 in.

I made my first attempts to create images when I was 36 years old. From those beginnings until the present, my work has almost always been influenced by my feelings about being an African American and frequently colored by my personal experiences as a woman. In whatever medium I work, I like to record the mysterious in the everyday. Mysterious people. The mystery of new life. The mystery of life drawing to a close. Buildings before people take them over and give them life or buildings deserted, making me wonder why did the people go away. The mysterious colors of the sky in the hour before dawn. People, particularly women, doing things that are mysterious. Although there are many exceptions in my creations, I think my best works are images of women that make the viewer ask: What are they doing? Or why are they doing that?

Throughout the eighties, while doing anthropological research with African American Baptists in rural Florida, Revivalists in Trench Town, Jamaica, and Spiritual Baptists in Barbados I photographed such mysteries. Here are some of those photographs.

© Audrey Brown