Brian Kosoff
My interest in photography and art started in my mid teens. My high school had a great art program, especially in sculpture and while I had some interest in photography at the time I was just as interested in sculpture.
In my junior year of high school I was accepted to attend the School of Visual Arts in New York City. I was still considering sculpture as my main study so I was not sure if my major would be fine art or photography. The answer became clear when in my last year of high school I enrolled in an internship program that allowed me to assist some NYC advertising and magazine photographers. I loved the work. It was all about problem solving, coming up with creative solutions and creating beauty.
Having found assisting photographers to be more worthwhile, I dropped out of SVA in my second year to assist photographers both full time and freelance while also pursuing assignments and other opportunities. At eighteen I was already shooting assignments for the Village Voice, a NY newspaper, and had my first solo NY gallery exhibition. By age twenty I had already photographed on assignment for national magazines, my work even appearing on their covers. Within a year I had a photo studio in Manhattan where I eventually specialized in still life.
I continued producing photographs for magazines and ad agencies and in 1998 I decided to go west and shoot some landscape as a vacation. While I was ill prepared at that time for such work nevertheless I loved it and started to produce a portfolio of landscape photographs. In 2001 at my wife’s urging I joined a local gallery and had a show, the reaction was far better than I could have imagined and was I encouraged to show my work to galleries in Manhattan, within a week I had gallery representation.
Then I made a big change. At the end of 2002, after twenty-five years of producing photographs for advertising and editorial clients I closed my studio so that I could devote myself full time to my personal photography.
My work has appeared in more than 40 exhibitions.
