Mallory Brooks' experimental analog photography begins with film and ends with chemical reactions that cannot be precisely duplicated. Every effect is achieved in-camera or during development—no AI, no Photoshop, no digital manipulation.

What follows is a look at the techniques that transform traditional photography into contemporary fine art.

Technique

Film Soup: Chemical Intervention

Film soup is the foundation of Brooks' experimental process—submerging exposed film in unexpected chemical mixtures before or during development.

After shooting, Brooks introduces film to chemical baths that alter how it develops. Boiling water, salt, wine, matcha powder, lemon juice, dish soap, flowers—each ingredient creates different effects. Temperature, timing, and chemical composition all influence the outcome. The same scene photographed twice, souped with identical ingredients, produces entirely different results.

The technique creates explosive color shifts, light leaks, dreamlike overlays, and textural depth that exists nowhere in conventional photography. Chemical artifacts serve as physical evidence of the experimental process.

Collage of a palm tree, city skyline, and colorful abstract shapes.

Technique

Multiple Exposure: Layered Reality

Multiple exposure involves exposing a single frame of film multiple times, layering different scenes into one composite image.

Brooks shoots the same frame two, three, or more times without advancing the film. Urban architecture overlaid with natural elements. Palm fronds layered against neon signage. Coastal scenes doubled back on themselves to create symmetry that didn't exist in reality. Each exposure must be carefully calculated to create cohesive visual narratives rather than muddy compositions.

The result: colorful overlays, unexpected compositional relationships, and surreal combinations that merge disparate elements into singular works.

Neon sign for Plaza Theatre with vibrant colors on a colorful background

Technique

Lens Distortion: Bending Light

Lens distortion manipulates how light enters the camera, warping perspective and creating optical effects that challenge conventional representation.

Brooks uses specialized lenses, prisms, and unconventional shooting angles to bend and fracture light. She shoots through textured glass, employs vintage lenses with optical imperfections, and deliberately introduces aberrations that photographers typically avoid. The technique transforms recognizable subjects into abstract compositions—straight lines curve, symmetry breaks apart, light fractures into unexpected patterns.

Silhouette of a palm tree against a pink and purple sky

Technique

Custom Filters: Color Manipulation

Custom filters alter color temperature and create optical effects in-camera, before light ever reaches the film.

Brooks layers colored gels, dichroic filters, and custom-made filter combinations over her lens. Unlike digital color grading applied in post-production, these filters physically alter how light is captured on film. She experiments with combinations that produce color shifts across the frame—cool blues in shadows, warm golds in highlights—creating palettes that feel simultaneously heightened and organic, grounded in film chemistry rather than digital manipulation.

Silhouettes of palm trees against a colorful sunset sky.

Technique

Color Overlays: Painterly Effects

Color overlays introduce additional hues and tones through deliberate light leaks and chemical interventions during development.

Brooks manipulates development by introducing light at specific moments, using colored darkroom safe lights, and employing cross-processing techniques—developing film in chemistry intended for different film types. These interventions create color casts and overlays that cannot be precisely controlled but can be influenced through experience and experimentation, giving photographic images the visual qualities of mixed media artwork.

From Field Work to Final Print

Brooks' process balances technical precision with experimental freedom. It begins with extensive fieldwork—hours spent observing subjects, searching for compositions that reveal transformation potential rather than simply documenting reality. She shoots on film, primarily 35mm, with deliberate exposure choices that account for later experimentation.

Exposed film then undergoes chemical intervention through film soup and other techniques. Each roll requires careful consideration of which chemicals, temperatures, and durations will enhance rather than destroy the latent images. All film is developed by hand in Brooks' Atlanta studio, where she maintains precise control even as earlier experimental steps introduced controlled chaos.

Once scanned at high resolution, this is the first time Brooks sees the results. Many frames don't survive the process. The ones that do reveal something impossible to achieve through conventional means. Successful images become part of Brooks' limited edition structure, printed on archival fine art paper designed to last 100+ years. Each print is signed and numbered, accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity.

The Result: Unrepeatable Art

Every technique Brooks employs creates effects specific to that single moment—chemical reactions that cannot be precisely duplicated, light interactions that exist only once, compositions that emerge from experimentation rather than planning.

This is what makes each image genuinely unique. Not unique in marketing language, but chemically, physically, unrepeatable.

Collectors acquire more than a photograph. They acquire the result of controlled chaos, artistic intuition, and years of experimental refinement.

Explore the Work