Brica Wilcox

© Brica Wilcox [self-portrait]

Interesting work by Brica Wilcox. I find intriguing when the photographers become their own subject in the story and the purpose of message they want to share. Brica Wilcox surely does a nice job from the aesthetic point of view, but I am not sure if I feel the message she tries to convey. This is the series “private life“.

I started making pictures in high school–an awkward time for everyone. One night I happened to see this grainy black and white band flyer posted on a building and I found myself absolutely mesmerized by it’s intensity. It was so simple–a flyer posted on the main drag in downtown Tucson–but it captured a feeling that gave me clarity and an excited, hopeful feeling. By coincidence and rather serendipitously, shortly thereafter I signed up for a photo class at the local community center that happened to be taught by the same person that made that photograph. It was also around that time that I started an internship at the Center for Creative Photography and it was there that my true education began. I poured through the photographs in their enormous archive and started to really take in the breadth of photography and its history. I was completely sucked in and between looking at pictures and making them it became an everyday part of life for me. I made a lot of self-portraits in the beginning. It seemed logical to experiment in private while I was figuring out my point of view. I have and continue to experiment with other genres of photography, but I think self-portraits will always be an area where my own stories and thoughts have their strongest voice. As a rule I pick concepts that are specific to my personal experience. The “Private Life” series is concerned with ideas of self-assessment, beauty, vanity and the relationship of a mother and daughter, but that is in no way the mission statement for all of my work. The recent return to self-portraiture is related to my specific experience in dealing with my mother’s death. In general I am drawn to a certain type of imagery, a very visceral point of view, but my work isn’t necessarily governed by those things. I simply set limitations on the way I set out to explore a subject and end by seeing what is left and use that to reassess and refine my approach. With my newest project, “Imaginary Lines,” part of my process was to make photographs of uninhabited, adjoining backyards, exploring what they offered as pure spaces in relation to one another. They became very graphic, but I also saw the environments they presented as backdrops or sets to a stage that I wanted to familiarize myself with. - Brica Wilcox

© Brica Wilcox [self-portrait]