Born in San Jose and raised in Southern California, my creative life began early with drawing and music lessons. By 1995, my interest in painting, focusing on he human figure, prompted my family and I to move from Los Angeles to New England, where there were several private ateliers offering training in the academic/realist tradition I was seeking. During this time I received superb training, exibited and won awards for my work and had a whole new world opened up to me.

But, something was missing...

In the long journey of a creative, it can take time to find the exact medium that best suits one’s goals, ability and temperament. While I enjoyed the precision and knowledge necessary to create great works of art, the long hours of daily isolation, inherent in fine art studio work, ended up being a very difficult existence. While outside experimenting with photography as a way to find relief from the seclusion, I realized that I had found my ideal creative fit.

I immediately gravitated to photographers who captured the human experience - Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, William Klein, and members of the Magnum photo agency. Lee Friedlander‘s unique take on the urban/suburban built environment was a particularly strong influence. Eventually the creative society photography of Larry Fink led me to develop my event photography practice, documenting events of all kinds; corporate galas, film festivals, red carpets, book launches, television specials, award ceremonies, live music, etc. My work can be seen in the libraries of several top photo/news agencies Getty Images, Associated Press, Invision and Shutterstock and appearing in print and online in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Time, NPR, Rolling Stone, Forbes amongst many others.Go to www.brentnclarke.com for examples of this work.

After 25 years on the east coast, my wife and I made a “quality of life’ change that brought us back to southern California, settling in the beautiful ocean front community of Belmont Shore.

Since then I have re-directed my energies to the full time pursuit of documenting the urban/ suburban built environment in and around the greater Los Angeles area.