We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ben Brown. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ben below.
Ben, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
I’m a photographer, videographer and podcaster. This multimedia work has encompassed a lot, but always comes with my lived experience of Tourette Syndrome and a strong presence from comorbids, like major depression. I think this gives me a kind of empathy that I’ve built my work around and has shaped my approaches and projects. Probably the most relevant to this discussion would be Tourette’s Podcast, which I started many years ago to explore my own Tourette and talk about it with other people who live with it too. In many cases, the episode’s guest had never before spoken with another Touretter. In some cases, the guest had never discussed it with anyone before, at all, making it a groundbreaking moment for that person’s Tourette story and quest for relatability. The podcast became globally popular and eventually sponsored by the Tourette Association of America and is gearing up for a new season. Tourette is a difficult one, socially, with painful self-awareness and sometimes the expectation to explain it so it makes more sense to the people around us. But every Touretter also knows the power of empathy and understanding. As it relates to my photo and video work, which I do with the general public, I feel like I can read the self-consciousness that come over people if they aren’t used to being in photos or videos, and that gives me angles to work with in terms of making the experience more comfortable, less awkward, softer to their needs, and so on. Sometimes that comes with sharing or showing my own vulnerability, if appropriate. Additionally, I do art photography, which is also driven by elements of my Tourette and depression or anxiety; these photos are gathered on long walks through different towns as a way of getting out, exploring, feeding my mind and staying creative, very much in the fight for better mental health and space from any difficulties. My latest exhibit, Automatic Luster, is currently on the walls of a popular gallery in Durham, NC, a great arts town. If I had to encapsulate it in a mission description, I’d say every bit of my work is driven by or aided by the senses of perspective and empathy that I’ve gotten from these and other diagnoses.
Ben, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I was diagnosed with Tourette when I was around five years old and learned more about the depression and anxiety sides of it starting in my teens, although I’d always felt the effects, since early childhood. Being diagnosed with something like Tourette in the 1980s was pretty wild. It’s misunderstood today — it was very, very misunderstood back then. So I grew up knowing I was different from my friends, and it was common for teachers and other adults to make me feel lesser-than. So I had to work pretty hard to be taken seriously. Early on, I found a lot of healing power, or at least solo enjoyment, in the world of arts, which led to photography and writing, which I eventually blended in my first career as a newspaper reporter, ultimately covering politics at the biggest newspaper in North Carolina. As a reporter covering hard news, I learned a lot, but I also, in my discourse, kept my sense of empathy and individuality with me, and I have no interest in deprogramming from it. All in all, this has put me in a position to meet, learn from and work with all kinds of people, even those cut from entirely different cloths. Those connections have done great things for my work, but they wouldn’t be there if they weren’t sincere. So I try always to be attentive to whatever message someone wants to share with me, which leads to products (photos, for example) that they’ll relate to or enjoy.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
As much as I want the people I work with to enjoy what we create together, and as much as I want to be successful in the professional world, my impetus for arts, like photography, videography and audio, was to explore creativity and find relief from the awkwardness of Tourette (which took me a long time to accept in myself) and the pain of major depression. I knew pretty early on that whatever I did professionally would be on “that side of the brain,” and I think my escapist drive toward these disciplines doubled as the training I’d need to be able to pull it off as something to rely on as I navigated life. It remains true. I’ve worked hard to reach this point, but I also feel extremely lucky with it, and I’m happy to say there’s still a lot I can learn. To connect it back to the professional side, I can say for sure that the senses of curiosity and vision that come with the arts have also helped me to connect with other people, learn their stories, and have experiences that are way more sincere and meaningful than the awkward professional-services character that people often feel they have to put on when they’re on the job. I like that my mental health, experience with the arts, and professional life all very much align, and that improvements in any of those areas seems to improve all of them.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
While my experience with photography and other creative work, like Tourette’s Podcast, has been of the highest importance to me when it comes to a good and healthy life, the struggles have been pretty brutal. While Tourette might initially seem like my forefront issue, it’s true that major depressive disorder — for me, coming off like a pairing of physical pain and the feeling of a haunted brain very much out of my control — has been the biggest factor in my life, even hospitalizing me a couple times in the past few years. It’s not conducive to a positive outlook, and I have to say that my work — particularly in the satisfaction of finishing a creative product for a client or other interested party — became as important as any medication. That might sound cliche, but that’s fine. It’s true. Meanwhile, my art photography continued; I accumulated most of my favorite images during the fight for better health over the past few years. I’ve since taken on heavier medical attention (a procedure called electroconvulsive therapy), which has helped a lot! And I think my biggest return on sticking with life through the hard times is playing out right now with my first real photography exhibit, at a popular art gallery in the Triangle of North Carolina. Called “Automatic Luster,” the exhibit features images gathered from my mental-health walks through different communities that are experience change through age or new development. Each of these images played a big part in my sense of purpose while battling the difficult stuff, so it’s pretty amazing to me that they’ve become a gallery exhibit. I couldn’t be happier and am so appreciative to the people who made that happen. It was an awesome way to start 2024 and has connected me to a lot of new people I look forward to working with more.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.benbrownmultimedia.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benbrownmultimedia
Image Credits
All photos by Ben Brown