Tim Brown | Photograph by Adam Williams
Editor’s Note: This is from the monthly column for We Are Chaffee’s Looking Upstream podcast, written by Adam Williams. The column is published in two newspapers local to Chaffee County, Colo.: the Chaffee County Times (Buena Vista) and The Mountain Mail (Salida).
‘We Are Chaffee’ with Tim Brown
Tim Brown might be most known for his tintype photography these days. But he also had many exciting years of globe-traveling as a rarely skilled kayaker-slash-adventure photographer. He recently talked about both, among other things, with me on We Are Chaffee’s Looking Upstream podcast.
We also talked about Brown’s fine art tintype series “Broken,” which features portraits and stories of divorce or otherwise significant relationship breakups. It’s a cathartic work of art. For the portrait participants, for the viewers of the work and for Brown.
I will keep saying, as I often do in this column and on the podcast, that the personal is universal. There might be no greater example of that than in the love, heartbreak and healing that Brown shares through “Broken.” And through the insights he so profoundly shared on Looking Upstream.
Here’s an excerpt from the podcast, with Brown telling how the concept of “Broken” came to be with a collaborator, and the experience of creating it and exhibiting it at the Steamplant.
“The idea came out of my own heartache or breakup. I was like, ‘Is there some way we could just put this onto a tintype? Put what we’re experiencing onto an image and do a show.’
“Our idea was, we’re going to have a dozen or so women that were in the midst of heartache or breakup and divorce in the moment, and we’d put them in a wedding dress and they would mask themselves with a skull, so no one could tell who they were. And then we’d ask them to write up to 400 words of what they were experiencing.
“We found six women. Then we thought, ‘Well, we should do men too.’ The interesting thing was at the beginning we thought, ‘Boy, how are we going to find 12 people that are willing to do this?’ I thought it’d be really hard. We found 12 people in three days. It wasn’t hard to do.
“It was amazing. We had all the women come together and we planned a whole day of food and stylizing and doing these tintypes. We asked everyone to write their story first. So when they first came, we went around the table and everyone sort of shared their story. Pretty quickly, everyone started seeing how, ‘Wow, this is a healing thing too.’
“Every song or movie is either about being in love or breaking up. I mean, it’s the human tragedy and condition that’s been going on forever. So I was like, ‘Is this just a tacky show like another story that we’ve seen so much?’ But when I saw the healing going on just by people talking about it, I thought that was really powerful.
“And the same thing happened with the men. But also one thing I really learned, too, is even in this day and age, there’s so much availability for healing and therapy and all of that, that when you’re in this heartbroken state, you’re just really alone. And really society doesn’t support it a whole lot for men. Men don’t talk a lot.
“Women heal much quicker and faster because they communicate more and they deal with it more, and they share with other women and they get more support. But even so, in the midst of it, you’re just on your own. And you have a lot of pain. You have physical pain, your chest pain, just sadness, and all that. And often, so often, breakups, they trigger our old wounds.
“Ultimately, I think that’s what most of it’s about. I mean, yes, there’s the sadness and losing your best friend, and just real things that are healthy loss or pain, but so often it triggers our attachment wounds and trauma that we had when we were younger, being abandoned, being left. And so I think that determines how much healing you have, how long it’s going to take you.
“Sometimes it takes years to heal. The truth is, the more damaged you are, the more pain and trauma from your childhood, the harder it is to heal, to rewire yourself.
“I was a little concerned, ‘Are people going to want to go to a show that’s just sort of dark and sort of sad and have a bunch of sad breakup stories?’ And it was the first show I’ve ever done that was more about the human condition rather than trying to sell something pretty and make some money.
“To put the stories with them really made it a pretty deep, meaningful experience. And when I did the show at the Steamplant, it was amazing. It was a nonstop stream of people. And people were spending two to three hours there. They’d read one or two stories and they’d sit down.
“There was a lot of people that were in the midst of a breakup, and they were in tears, but so glad they came. And a lot of the stories were like, ‘It’s just great to see that I’m not the only one in the world going through this. There’s a million people going through this. It’s going to be okay. This is just part of life.”
Personal. Universal.
Looking Upstream is available weekly on all podcast players (e.g. Spotify, Apple Podcasts) and at wearechaffeepod.com. It also airs on KHEN 106.9 FM community radio at 2 p.m. on Tuesdays.
’Til the next episode, “Share stories, make change.”
Adam Williams is host, producer and photographer for We Are Chaffee’s Looking Upstream podcast. Listen at wearechaffeepod.com. Follow @wearechaffeepod on Instagram.
