About
A Little Bit About Me...
Maggie Middlebrook is a fine art and self-portrait photographer who is based in the San Fernando Valley and the greater Los Angeles area. She is a 2021 graduate of California State University, Northridge where she holds her Bachelor of Arts in Photography. Because of her fondness for the art community, Maggie has made her work a huge part of her life. In May 2020, Maggie was honored with the Edwin R. Sievers Memorial Scholarship for her work. Her photographs have appeared in galleries across the U.S. as well as at CSUN where she displayed her own solo installation. In addition to photography, she also pursues filmmaking and has worked on numerous projects, such as grip, actor, and director of photography. Trying to learn as much as she can, she has volunteered at the LA Film Festival and interned at the Los Angeles Center of Photography. Maggie continues to pursue her career in the arts through the encouragement of her past professors, family, and friends.Now A Little More Personal...
The job of a photographer is to portray what the mind thinks through how the eyes see onto a two-dimensional surface. For some, this is the hardest part of making art. For me, it's the most exciting. I find joy in creating my strangest dreams and distant memories into something tangible; it's the only way I know how to make sense of them. I have looked through the lens of a camera for a large part of my life. I would steal my family’s digital camera, a small little device with a fixed lens, and sneakily take it over next door. Putting glitter and pink eye shadow on my friends and dressing them up in frilly skirts, I'd make them pose for the camera. The photos weren’t good, but there was already a vision in my little mind.Taking those images showed me what other worlds there were; one of snowy riverbeds and towering lines of old architecture. There was no end to what I could shoot. I find inspiration through my long treks across the country and in the San Fernando Valley, meeting as many people as possible. From tearing out pages of my mother’s Vogue magazines to recording myself with my father's old VHS camcorder, my subconscious expands. Each thought that flashes by affects not only how my eyes perceive the world, but how someone else’s would. How a kid, about the same age as when I started creating, would imagine the great unknown.