Born and raised in Mountain Center, California, my proximity to wilderness became the conduit through which a love for photography developed. My earliest photographs – backcountry snowboarding on Tahquitz Peak – were published in our hometown newspaper, the Idyllwild Town Crier, and The Snowboard Journal magazine.

Trading mountains for beach, I studied B&W film developing at Grossmont College while photographing waves at remote coastal points in Baja California. Through work as an auto mechanic, forklift driver and valet, I bought my first digital camera, a Canon 10D, and enrolled in the Visual Journalism program at Brooks Institute of Photography.

The Ventura Riverbed sat directly behind campus and I was drawn to it naturally in search of wildlife, but discovered instead a dense community of people living among the reeds, many by choice. The city of Ventura planned to raze the settlement and relocate the people who lived there. The story would become my first long-term video project, culminating in the film River Haven, which was awarded a CPOY Gold Medal, reorienting my career path toward video journalism and documentary film.

Upon graduation, I took a job at the Naples Daily News in SW Florida to help launch the first newspaper-based newscast in the country, Studio 55. We produced daily content for the show and covered high school football like it was the NFL. Within six months I had shot and edited 116 character-driven video packages, explored the Everglades on kayak, loaded the kayak into a U-Haul, and moved to Detroit … midwinter.

When I joined the Detroit Free Press, I joined a legendary photo staff in a legendary news town at a legendary time. My arrival coincided with the launch of the Canon 5D Mark II, which revolutionized documentary filmmaking overnight. Utilizing the Free Press’ diverse pool of lenses, I bushwhacked through the forests of Belle Isle – a Detroit city park – to film the island’s unique ecosystem in the heart of the Great Lakes waterway. Belle Isle Revealed was nominated for a National Emmy award in the craft category of Nature and Wildlife Cinematography.

Nowhere in Detroit is the scale of industrial ruin more shocking than at the former Packard Plant. Fascinated by the way that nature had reclaimed the place, I began filming landscapes while getting pulled deeper into history. Five years of work among the ruins led to my first feature-length documentary, Packard: The Last Shift. The film premiered on opening night of the inaugural Freep Film Festival.

Produced by the Detroit Free Press, the annual, documentary-focused Freep Film Festival grew to become one of the largest festivals in the state. Over its ten-year history, I directed feature-length documentaries and short films that often anchored the festival’s prestigious film lineups. Many projects involved complex partnerships with Detroit cultural institutions, national media collaborations, and distribution goals that went beyond the scope of freep.com.

Coldwater Kitchen premiered at DOC NYC in conjunction with a robust impact campaign featuring the men in the film, who have engaged audiences at dinner-and-movie events nationwide, culminating in a screening for lawmakers at the U.S. Capitol. The film’s acceptance to American Film Showcase allowed me to teach a week-long video storytelling workshop to Fijian journalists in conjunction with the U.S. Embassy.

From the very start of my career, impactful video storytelling and impactful training around video storytelling were never mutually exclusive. I have developed photography and film curriculum for small groups and large audiences alike. At USA TODAY Network, I led a team that equipped reporters to shoot and edit video on their iPhones, dramatically increasing pageviews. At Maine Media Workshops, I taught an annual video storytelling class for more than a decade, working one-on-one with participants to find, film and edit character-driven narratives over the course of one week.

Nature photography has always been a constant in my life, but as 2020 pandemic lockdowns forced solitude, it took on much deeper meaning. Using combinations of slow shutter speed and intentional camera movement, I began making images that literally blurred the reality of nature during that uncertain time. In a partnership between the Detroit Free Press and Kresge Arts in Detroit, Literary Arts Fellows wrote poetry based on my photographs.

Since then, the work has radically evolved, becoming my core creative pursuit. Longterm projects are conceptualized, photographed and blended in Photoshop with specific storytelling goals in mind. Each large-scale piece depicts the many realities of changing landscapes over time, expressing both their intrinsic beauty and pervasive uncertainty. The work is hosted on a dedicated website – briankaufman.art