An American photographer, Gina Brocker received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, and her MFA from the University of Wales. Irvine Contemporary began representing Brocker in 2005 after her success at “Introductions,” an exhibition of promising emerging artists, since then, she has had several solo exhibitions. Gina Brocker’s disarmingly personal and intimate photographs extend recent work in documentary and portrait-based photography, showing affinities with the approaches of Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, and Angela Strassheim in capturing the personal details of families and relationships. Gina Brocker’s work always appears unstaged and unposed, close to snap-shot directness, yet the photographs are only possible through the trust and friendship of the family that has included the artist and her camera in the ordinary and everyday drama of their lives. Through an unobtrusive camera lens—the subjects rarely look at the camera or notice its presence--a viewer is positioned as an observer of a spontaneous moment that shines out with an individual reality. Although many of the images correspond with established themes and genres like childhood innocence, teenage alienation, family relationships, domestic scenes, and youthful experiments in identity, the locations and individual humanity of the artist’s subjects surprise the viewer with telling details irreducible to genre types. The images show us a world familiar and yet completely individual and personal, shaped by the deep empathy of the photographer in interpreting and recording the moments of everyday life.

Gina Brocker was selected for, 25 Under 25:Up-and-Coming American Photographers (Vol.2), selected by Sylvia Plachy and co-published by Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and Powerhouse Books (New York, 2008). A series of her Donovan family photographs was also recently published in Vision magazine, Beijing, China (June, 2008). With portfolio submission, she competed against students from around the UK and Ireland and was announced the Grand Prize Winner at Nikon’s prestigious photographic Discovery Awards, held at Olympia, London. (Dec, 2008). Recently Brocker was Shortlisted for the Terry O’Neill Award and exhibited her work at Getty Images Gallery London and the Independent Photographers Gallery Sussex. Her photographs were also featured in the 13/9/2209 issue of The Sunday Times Magazine and the October/November issue of Hotshoe magazine.