I Love This... | Chloe Browne: London Wedding photographer

Taken by BoyGhost. He has quite the eye for images. Check out his Flickr

Photoboothphile | Chloe Browne: London Wedding photographer

I am always excited by how many beautiful books there are in the world, and sometimes disappointed at how little time I can make to read them.
Last year's favourites included The Genius of Photography which accompanied the BBC television series and documents a brief history of photography and it's importance in modern day society.

One of the best engagement presents we got was in my opinion, The Great Life Photographers, and I added to my small collection with The Henri Cartier Bresson Scrapbook, which is just beautiful, even before it's opened.

So, imagine my surprise when I was bought two books in one go, both on two of my favourite subjects: photographers and photobooths. Annie Leibovitz At Work I haven't even opened yet, as it deserves a day all to itself with warm socks and lit candles, but this one needed cracking open immediately:

American Photobooth explores the history of the... American photobooth, and some of the kooks who've entered them over the years. I have always been fascinated with photostrips of this sort, and Nåkki Goranin does an excellent and intriguing job in stringing the story together.

I started my own collection of photostrips of unknowns, which I'd found in Rome. There was one photobooth which never failed-en route to the city's immigration office, where you needed to provide 4 passport photos. I guess it must have been a very tempremental machine, as there were almost always photos left abandoned, which I would scoop up on my way to the bus stop, shove in a book and leave in my bag until I got home. It would've been quite obvious the photos I was holding were not my own, and I didn't want to look like a weirdo.

I found it interesting to look at these people, and how they posed when they knew that no-one was watching, but that someone would eventually see. There was almost always a deadness in their eyes, or a twisted top lip or brow frozen, challengingly.

I have always loved a good photobooth, not just for photos of people I don't know, but of course, for photos of me or us or them. I spent a lot of time in photobooths with my best friends in high school, before the hyper-revolution of the Harajuku anime booth, with frames and glitter mandatory.
I still carry a photo on my keys of my sister and I which is 10 years old, of us and our best gangster pose. I made her sit right at the front, so her head was bigger than mine, as it's quite the opposite in real life.

This book has gone some of the way in making me feel a tiny bit better about not having scanned our Melbourne storystrip before a candle caught it alight in my bedroom. Whenever I think back to it, I'll be looking at these instead.

Annie Leibovitz at the NPG | Chloe Browne: London Wedding photographer

I went to see the Annie Leibovitz exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery last week, just a few days before it was due to close.



Doesn't she look like her dad?!

There is no doubt in my mind that she is a tremendous and accomplished photographer; just a google image search of her name alone brings up more than 80,000 results, having been commissioned to work with iconic celebrities from Angelina Jolie to the Queen Mother throughout her professional career.

I was enthralled to see so much of her work in the Vanity Fair exhibition held at the NPG last year, so I was expecting more of the same this time around; magical fairytale-esque portraits of Hollywood's hottest, seemingly candid portraits of the bold and the beautiful.

What I was surprised to be more drawn in by, was the family portraits on display from her personal annals.

Incredibly delicate captures of her mother and father in softening sunlight on a boat somewhere, her beautiful, picture-perfect daughter and the relaxed intimacy of her relationship with the inimitable Susan Sontag.

If you've missed the exhibition on its world tour, then you'll need to buy the book.

And... Go! | Chloe Browne: London Wedding photographer

This for me, is a little piece of magic. I've loved this style of photography since I first came across Simon Pais-Thomas on Flickr not long ago. He creates eery floating shoes which look like someone has just stepped out of them, that your eyes want to and almost do believe.


The above is some recent work by Denis Darzacq taken in a supermarket. Now I love a good supermarket as much as the next girl, presuming there isn't anybody else around of course, but the idea of leaping for joy and reaching for the stars down the aisles had never occurred to me until now. I'll see you down at Sainsbury's Local.

Dirty Little Secret... | Chloe Browne: London Wedding photographer

I've loved this blog, for so long.




I've often wondered just how real they are-so dark, so outlandish, at times so infantile. Logging in on a Monday to check the latest installment, I'm always stirred by something; the honesty or inventiveness, of these offerings.

In any case, I love it because at some point, the chances are they're real for someone, somewhere in the world.
Frank Warren, Man In Charge of PostSecret has made an appeal to the PS community, to buy the four books they've published in order to keep adverts off the site. I think it's a fair exchange.

Mine's in the post {secret}.