BRIAN ZAHM
I BRING MY Z-GAME
PICZ
Since the 90s, I compulsively carried around a camera, constantly snapping away. Here's a smattering...
H20 | 2019 | 50"x16" Gelatin Print
Photo Note: I was hired to make a comforting piece to go on a wall above a bed, and I thought "What's more comforting than gentle tides and the sun's reflection?" This image is a compilation of three smaller images I blended together. Used a 1/2" black wood frame to make it appear as though the image is floating.
FLOWER POWER | 2022 | 44"x60" Photo Rag Print
Photo Note: An interior designer wanted a dynamic show piece for the great room of a private residence. The client loved pop art and color, especially red, and I noticed the home had many hard straight lines so I wanted to make something with organic shapes to temper the space. This is an assemblage of several different images taken of gardens in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood. The final version is encased in a 2" white vinyl frame. Incidentally, I made a duplicate for myself and gave a smaller version to my mom.
THE KISS | 2003 | 31"x42" Photo Rag Print
Photo Note: A decorator asked me to make a show piece for the living room of a private residence. The residence was clean and minimal with lots of bright colors. I thought something a bit darker with pops of color could compliment the room nicely. This is a single image, where the right model, the right lighting, lens, and shutter speed all came together perfectly. This image really cemented my love of photography.
THE KITCHEN SINK | 1996 | 28"x21" Photo Rag Print
Photo Note: My favorite decorator asked me to make a piece for the blank kitchen wall of a private residence. Naturally, gotta do the kitchen sink. Don't tell anyone, but this is a single photograph I took at house party on Ohio State's campus. I was hanging out in their kitchen and the place was a shit show. I took the image of the sink because I liked the colors (lots of bright plastic wear) and the water looked like it had been there for weeks, a gelatinous gray goo, almost like a Jell-O mold. I used the negative for the final piece, so what was once gnarly is now poppy. The final piece is finished in a 1.5" white vinyl frame with 3" white vinyl outer matte and 1/8" purple inner mattte.
BOUQUET | 2018 | 16"x24" Photo Rag Print
Photo Note: Was scouting for some potential b-roll for a feature film—needed some Americana. This is from Chicago's Navy Pier fireworks show they put on most nights during the summer. There's clear water and then the fireworks barge across the inlet, so the vantage point is prime for photography. The rocket trails and colorful red tendrils make the work come alive, and thought it looked like a bouquet. I made this for my mom as a housewarming gift, and who doesn't love giving flowers to their mom? This was printed on Photo Rag to give it a more textured, painterly quality. I finished this in a 1.5" white frame with 4" gold fleck matte to make it sparkle and pop.
CIGAROOS | 2006 | 7"x5" Gloss Print
Photo Note: I made this for a friend who I thought should stop smoking. Normally I'm like, "live and let live," but smoking is pretty harsh, hard to quit, and I didn't want my friend to die. He doesn't smoke anymore. Does vaping count? Anywho, this is an image from an outdoor ashtray behind a bar after the rain. Nothing like soggy cigarettes — I went glossy to emphasize the texture of the cigaroos. I framed this in a 2" silver frame to echo an ashtray.
3000 MKII | 2019 | 16"x24" Semi Gloss Print
Photo Note: This is a commissioned piece of a 1963 Austin-Healey 3000 MKII (BJ7) created for a vintage car collector. My goal was to create something timeless, so I used a 45mm tilt-shift lens to help capture the car's body lines and energy. This was printed on semi gloss photo paper to add some sheen and finished in a 1.5" chrome frame with 3" baby blue suede outer matte and .25" white inner matte to create an extension of the image.
THINMAN (self-portrait) | 1997 | 5"x12" Photo Rag Print
Photo Note: The sun was in the right place when I was walking to work, and I loved the crack in the pavement that gives a dramatic splash of asymmetry and uncertainty, so I snapped this pic. Is that a peace sign or bunny ears? I'll leave that up to you to decide. Printed this as an Xmas gift for my sister; I framed this in a 1" silver frame with a leaning post so it could be propped up on a desk, almost like I was standing there. Occasionally I use this as my director bio pic. I hate being in front of the camera, I really really do.
THE WAR OF ART | 2004 | 8"x 10" (each) Diptych Mylar Print
Photo Note: Found this in a back alley behind my studio one day. I photographed it and decided to make a diptych from it. I called it "The War of Art" as a play on the book "The Art of War" (which was a book I read around that time) because frankly, this artful graffiti looked bloody. Printed individually on 8”x10” mylar, I later used it for a DULL BOY double album cover.
CON-NECT | 2004 | 24"x 22" Diptych Photo Rag Print
Photo Note: This studio model work was heavily inspired by Man Ray's infamous Rayographs. This diptych explores connection with the counterpoint of a permeable layer, leading one to question the connection's authenticity. I ended up framing this for the model herself in a 2" vinyl gloss frame with 1" white suede matte.
SILLY | 2005 | 29"x40" Photo Rag Print
Photo Note: I worked with models who wanted to make creative art, not just pose for glamour shots. I always leaned toward abstract forms in studio-oriented photography. Here, I used silly string to obscure the model; it also added a whimsical and suggestive baseline: strange, erotic, but pure. This is one of my favorites due to the color, texture, depth, and overall ambiguity of time/space. Although the form is very human, it melts into something quite nebulous. Purchased by a private collector, the image was finished with a 2" matte black frame so that the photo seemingly floats on the wall.
QUARTET | 1999 | 3600px
Photo Note: In this series, I would photograph models and then project the photos on the wall and photograph the projections through colored lighting gels with a wide-angled lens. Really enjoy the disproportionate, ethereal quality this process created.
REFLECUADOR | 2008 | 3600px
Photo Note: I was in Ecuador in a collaborative effort with the CDC, US AID, and The Tropical Disease Institute to create a video series to prevent Chagas disease. As usual, I brought my still camera. Ecuador is sooo beautiful. One of my greatest memories was traveling through the Andes Mountains one night and looking down (yes! looking down!) on the Big Dipper. It was majestic. In Catamayo, Ecuador at sunset I found some interesting panes of glass to compose some shots and capture a heaven-like existence.
THE STORM | 2018 | 3600px
Photo Note: I was doing some BTS images for a feature film, THE WORLD WITHOUT YOU, when a storm rolled in. Frankly, these were some of the craziest clouds I had ever seen. I was glad I had a good camera with me. About a minute after I took the photos, hurricane-type rain besieged the location and we lost two hours of filming.
FIRE WORK | 1998 | 3600px
Photo Note: I took these at a Columbus, Ohio fireworks display one night to test out a new camera. I found these while looking for the firework photograph called "Bouquet" that is a bit sooner on this page. As a kid, always loved going to see fireworks and went back to my childhood stomping grounds for this series. Mainly used these as screen savers for a number of years.
ASYLUM | 2006 | 3600px
Photo Note: Every photographer needs to trespass in an old asylum once in a while. This was in the old tuberculosis ward at the former Ridges Mental Health Facility in Athens, Ohio before it was torn down. FYI, The Ridges is where they perfected the lobotomy. Do I need one? Fun fact, it was at The Ridges where I took some folks from Darkhorse Comics to see the stain of a dead body from the asylum's past. An older lady had wandered away from her ward and got lost in an old attic space and eventually passed away in front of a window, where her body rested for months as the sun burned her form into the floor. Darkhorse later did a limited release of this illustrated story called THE STAIN, in which they used my image. I'm the person who looks like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. On another note (I know this is getting wordy) one Halloween I dressed up as Shaggy from Scooby Doo and everyone asked why I didn't dress up. That was the end of Halloween frivolities for me.
FUN HOUSE | 1998 | 8" x 10" Individual Mylar Prints
Photo Note: I used to visit New Orleans periodically to see friends, relatives, etc. and I was snapping pix left and right. For this series, I used mylar to photograph mannequin reflections to create a funhouse mirror effect. It definitely fit the vibe. I even printed the final pieces on mylar to really embrace the aesthetic. I finished all of these with a 1.5" silver steel frame.
LIGHT SPEED | 1998 | 6.5" x 5" Gloss Prints
Photo Note: I used to travel a lot for freelance documentary work. I found myself on the road constantly, all over the Northeast, Midwest, and South. I always brought a still camera along. After a day's work, I traveled a lot at night. Going through mountains felt like I was somehow traveling through space. On the road, it was often only me and semis, so I would snap pics while I drove (I'm dumb). Long lines of semi lights would zoom by and realized I could sculpt the light to capture an intergalactic vibe. I finished the pieces by doing two-sided glass block frames (using one image on each side) and gave them as gifts.
SLINKEE | 2005 | 6.5" x 5" Semi-Gloss Print
Photo Note: I had just finished HEADSPACE: THE SOUND OF LIFE and was somewhat adrift. I wasn't sure what my next project was, where I was going to go, etc. I was hoping the film would hit and I could do other cool things. In the limbo period, I got a warehouse space (behind the famous LITTLE BROTHERS music club) in Columbus, Ohio to make art. I started experimenting with photography and some of my first video installations — all I wanted to do was create. I used to photograph toys a lot, and when I found a pink Slinky I knew it was game on. The first image is an homage to The Great Wave of Kanagawa by Hokusai. I finished these in two-sided glass block frames (with an individual pic on each side) to function as small accent pieces.
THE OFFICE | 2005 | 3600px
Photo Note: These are some images from my old warehouse studio. The space had spartan furnishing, but what was there really seemed to pop out, especially in the gallery setting. The lightbulb and chair were originally designed as a diptych. The straight lines and the green of the chair contrasted against the curvilinear lines and the red in the light bulb image. Hints of decay taint the purity of each image. When I was gathering images for the site, I found a photo of pencils taken in the same gallery space and decided to throw them in as a finale to the piece. Not too shabby, right?
PORT LAND | 2003 | 3600px
Photo Note: I was visiting my sister and some relatives in Portland, where I visited quite a lot growing up. The rain and gray skies, at times, can really burrow into one's soul. But I'm an absolute sucker for textures, like rain on a window pane. Most of these shots were taken while driving around on a rainy day.
MYAMI | 2019 | 3600px
Photo Note: I used to work in Miami a good deal during my full-time freelancing days. This time I was back there for a vacation in South Beach. I had my camera and a few hours to kill before my flight back to Chicago. Inspired by some of my photography in Guyana at the coconut farm (see below), I decided to take some shots using a couple old lighting gels (of course, one had to be "MIAMI" pink). It had rained earlier that morning, so there were some nice puddles on the ground creating reflections to photograph. I always enjoy the extra-dimensionality of a good puddle, it's like a doorway to another universe.
COCONUTZ | 2008 | 9" x 7" Semi-Gloss
Photo Note: Is it obvious that I love palm trees? I think this is from growing up in Ohio where the best you're gunna get is a maple or an occasional birch and palm trees, at least to me, represent sun-bathed paradise, a far cry from the Rust Belt Midwest. I was on location at a coconut farm with a CineGuyana film crew and had some down time and started walking around. I found a beautiful clean reflection in one of their irrigation canals and went to work, hoping to create a piece I could give to my mom when I got back home. I ended up framing a couple of these in 1.5" natural woodgrain frames with a 3" white canvas matte.
RROBO (horizontal) | 2005 | 3600px
Photo Note: I grew up in Ohio next to the train tracks. I played in this old train yard countless days after school. It was the 70s and that's what kids did then, play on rusty machinery. When I visited my old stomping grounds, I felt as if I’d stumbled upon a post-apocalyptic robot junk yard, so I started snapping away. Thought I might use some on an album cover, but I never did. A few of these robot-type figures seemed happy, but frankly most seemed to be tortured and screaming, almost like I was visiting some form of metallurgical purgatory. Was I projecting myself on this machinery, feeling very much like a robot who had to create create create to stay alive? Honestly, I don’t think these pictures are the greatest, but they’re fun.
RROBO (vertical) | 2005 | 3600px
Photo Note: See the above description of the RROBO pix. These are VERTICALLY-oriented pix in the series.
CINEGUYANA BTS (horizontal) | 2011 | 3600px
Photo Note: A true career highlight was the unique opportunity to take my educational and professional production skills to Guyana, South America where I was tasked to help bring a narrative film industry to the country as part of a grant from Higher Education for Development (HED) and US AID, a project called The President’s Film Endowment. Over the course of four months, I taught all phases of cinema production to 180 students, ages 18-65, who had little-to-no film experience. With this newfound knowledge along with modest production equipment and resources, the students created eight short narrative films featuring Guyanese culture and formed a film collective known as CineGuyana. Ultimately these films went to film festivals worldwide and were eventually shown at The American Film Institute. As a human on planet earth, I couldn't have been luckier. I miss Guyana and this amazing group of people, many of whom have taken their skills all over the Caribbean and internationally. Here are some HORIZONTAL behind-the-scenes pictures from the experience.
CINEGUYANA BTS (vertical) | 2011 | 3600px
Photo Note: See the above section about CineGuyana. Here are some VERTICAL behind-the-scenes pictures from the experience.
POTLUCK: PEOPLE, PLACES and THINGS (horizontal) | 1997-2012 | 3600px
Photo Note: Here’s a mengarie of horizontally-oriented photos that I happened upon when looking through my archives. I'll keep adding to this when I explore my archives more deeply, but couldn't resist including this, more for my memories than anything.
POTLUCK: PEOPLE, PLACES and THINGS (vertical) | 1997-2012 | 3600px
Photo Note: Here’s a mengarie of vertically-oriented photos that I happened upon when looking through my archives. I'll keep adding to this when I explore my archives more deeply, but couldn't resist including this, more for my memories than anything.
ITALY (horizontal) | 2024 | 35mm Gloss Prints
Photo Note: These photos were taken with a disposable camera with a crappy viewfinder in Sardinia, Milan, Piacenza, and the Barolo region in northern Italy when Tasha Matsumoto and I were there for Concorto Film Festival (one of the most amazing film festivals on planet earth!!!) in partnership with Cine Underground (one of the coolest film festivals on planet earth — hi, Lorenzo + Sara!). This was the trip of a lifetime, and an old-school point and shoot film seemed appropriate. And damn, do I love the limitation of film and the satisfying snap of the shutter.
ITALY (vertical) | 2024 | 35mm Gloss Prints
Photo Note: See the above description about Italy. Here are some VERTICALLY-oriented photos from the trip.
BB BZ (self-portrait) | 2006 | 3600px Gloss Coasters
Photo Note: Was in a state park in Ohio to scout some film locations and went to the restroom and saw a metal mirror that had been riddled with BB indentations, and decided to take a few goofy self-portraits embracing the singular funhouse effect. Ultimately, I printed this on glossy coasters and gave them to a friend because dammit, I care.
CMH STUDIO OFFICE| 2005 | 5"x 7"
Photo Note: Was putting my site together and found this photo I snapped of my warehouse office where all sorts of merriment was made. I loved this place. I love the people who came to this space. I was lucky. So I put this on the site for posterity's sake, so there you go.