PhotoShelter Photographer M. Scott Brauer

photo by M. Scott Brauer

One of the photographers whose work I’ve been introduced to through PhotoShelter is M. Scott Brauer. I’ve repeatedly pulled his imagery to illustrate blog posts, not by searching through his page specifically, but by subject; his images just catch my eye every time. They’re quiet, and often quite odd. Each one seems like a separate, secret narrative; I really love them. Brauer works as a photojournalist in Nanjing, China. Here is his personal site.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Brauer this morning about my Antonin Kratochvil interview; it turns out he used to assist him. They worked together in 2005 and 2006, and traveled to Haiti before the elections. Brauer also helped Kratochvil out with scanning and archiving.

I was able to ask Brauer a few questions:

How long did you work with Antonin? Can you tell me more about what it was like, and where you were in that stage of your career?

The first time I met him was outside a hotel in Haiti; I’d been interning at VII in the old New York office and his assistant fell through. The VII assignment person Marion, now at Newsweek, asked me if I was free and I said sure. I helped out with the edit down there, toned all the files, transmitted the to Time, bought a broken mirror off the street for a portrait, whatever came up; shot alongside him too, which is where I really learned about his process.  Back in NYC I ended up spending a bit of time at his apartment going through tons of his old negatives rescanning a bunch of his portraits for a reissue of Incognito called Persona (published in Czech Republic in 2006, I think) and a bunch of other stuff. I found out he’s a pretty good cook; I had a few meals with his family and other photographers. Generally I had a blast, but I needed to learn how to shoot and left New York a couple months after starting the assisting to work at a midwestern newspaper. Sucks, too, because literally the day before my plane out of the city, a Magnum guy who I’d met at Antonin’s called me to ask if i could do some assisting for him. I was bummed that I had to say no.

How did you get started in photography?

When I started at VII in fall 2005, I’d really only been shooting for half a year or so. I kinda jumped in head first and tried to learn a little about the industry. My only experience was half a year at the student newspaper at my university in Seattle (where I studied Russian
and philosophy) and a couple of months interning at Black Star scanning a bunch of negatives before they got sent off to some university collection. I got to work with their civil rights archive a bunch, and even got to scan a couple W. Eugene Smith shots. Getting into the assisting thing just sort of fell into my lap, but I guess that’s how it often does. I haven’t been in touch with Antonin or any of the other photographers I met at that time, though I do talk to Haviv a little now and again.

Are you shooting entirely your own now? How are you making a living?

I’ve got to say that I’m barely scraping by. I’ve been living in China since August and likely for a while longer, but let’s just say the assignment bat phone isn’t ringing off the hook. I’m just like the hundreds and thousands of other photographers trying to get some editors to look at my work and return my emails and phone calls, and I’m really pretty bad at the self-promo game. I do a little web design work to get some cash and have started doing some corporate work for the foreign businesses around here. But mostly I’m lucky that the cost of living is next to nothing here.

Below, some M. Scott Brauer imagery. These were all shot in China.

A young boy plays with a toy gun on the beach in Sanya, China.