Brett Howard Sproul

My career as an artist began in San Francisco in 2006 as a way for me to confront, comprehend, and make peace with my past and the world around me.

For four years I worked primarily in the decrepit South of Market area and concentrated on the abandoned, ignored and generally marginalized aspects of society because I saw them as a reflection of my own tenuous existence. I did not save any work from the first two years, however, because it was mainly a period of teaching myself how to use a camera and a computer, and none of the images were satisfactory. It was a time of great experimentation, though, and it generated ideas that I still develop today.

The pictures in this gallery document one of the most difficult periods of my existence and I see them as very beautiful, as I do all of my images, because they capture the substance, superficiality, attractiveness and repulsiveness of life, and the inherent contradictions therein.