Sandra Brewster

With the introduction of digital cameras and, a bit later, phones with cameras, we’ve all learned to strike a pose, a smile, and show our best angle in a matter of seconds. Self-portraiture has taken over social media, but also the arts, from photography exhibitions to the polemic selfies book by Kim Kardashian. But there are always people going against the tide and showing us that a different path is possible. Today, it is Sandra Brewster who exemplifies that.

Born and raised in Canada to Guyanese parents, the artist and photographer uses portraiture not to depict her subjects clearly and perfectly, or to enhance their physical beauty, but to reflect on deeper issues related to migration, belonging, and identity. Especially her series Blur, which she started almost ten years ago, shows her subjects (who’re often friends and family members) in movement, not allowing viewers to fully decipher their faces and features. “The images represent a movement from one place to another place, referencing history and memory while making it inaccessible to fix the subject. This series is a development of my concerns about Black representation and notions of monolithic communities,” she tells us in this interview.

Now, Free Pony Press has worked with Brewster on the publication of Blur. “Our intention was not to make a catalogue but an artist book, an art object of its own that presents an aspect of the series yet allows a closer look at the surfaces of each piece presented,” Brewster explains. Today, we sit down with her to discuss analogue photography, Black representation, and the importance of physicality and texture in photographs.

Photo by Arseni Khamzin

What first attracted you to photography? Were you always drawn to the arts?

My foundation is drawing and painting. At times I would reflect what I see in photos through these mediums. I grew up in a family that appreciated the arts, so it wasn’t hard to be drawn to it.

You started the Blur series in 2016. What was the initial thought behind it, and how has that first idea evolved throughout the years?

I started the Blur series to explore notions of identity through movement. I asked friends and family to move in front of the camera while I took images of them at a slow shutter speed. Their movement was then exposed within the frame. At the time, I was using the gel transfer medium in much of my work. Transferring these images to paper resulted in surfaces that appear weathered and worn yet precious as they were still beautiful. They reminded me of old family photographs — their waxy surfaces were similar.
The Blur series presents a community of people of multi-layered identities, complex beings. The images represent a movement from one place to another place, referencing history and memory while making it inaccessible to fix the subject. This series is a development of my concerns about Black representation and notions of monolithic communities. The series suggests a mash up of sorts of place and time. I relate it to myself and those I know who are born here in Toronto or who have moved here at a young age yet have a grasp on an elsewhere place we’ve been aware of through family stories and upbringing. Another aspect of Blur is how it challenges our perception of the pristine qualities of photography. Including the need for a picture to ‘capture’ the subject.

The blurred portraits are intrinsically political. As Pamela Edmonds writes in your new book: “Brewster’s figures, slipping in and out of focus, will not submit to that [colonial glare]. They refuse to be fully viewed and in that they insist on their freedom. In Brewster’s images this blur does not erase; rather, it animates the space Black life as a site of endless possibility.” Could you expand more on this?

Blur has been aligned with Edoard Glissant’s discussions on opacity. The right to hold back and not expose all of oneself and how that should be fine. Edmonds beautifully expresses this as a “slipping in and out of focus,” which I appreciate as she emphasises the agency of each subject of Blur and their freedom to choose when and how to be viewed. There is a tendency for a mainstream need to know all. Within my series and how I believe Black communities live, this is not preferred.

Photo by Arseni Khamzin

That blurring also speaks on adaptation and assimilation. “Brewster’s figures blur because their survival demands it,” Pamela Edmonds writes. Despite your subjects remaining opaque and anonymous, I’d like to know more about them. How do you meet them, choose them, and what stories do they tell you when they’re having their blurry portrait taken?

The people I gather have for the most part a similar history. They all have Caribbean family connections, whether they themselves were born in the region or they are born of parents who were. The majority of the people who came out for the initial gathering are friends and family members. Much of our conversations in general touch on the Caribbean despite our current and ongoing lived experiences in North America.
A friend who moved here from Trinidad when he was a child had to turn on his calypso playlist in order for him to loosen up and move in front of the camera. When he did this, I felt that this action, in part, proved the point of the series. In general, there was a strong level of trust as we gathered together, engaged with each other and moved through the project. I know these folks, yet some surprised me with their timidness while others seemed to thrive in front of a camera.

Your process is very complex: you work with gel-transfer technique, and the resulting images have an undeniable tactile quality to them — they can be scarred, torn, creased. Could you guide us through your process, from taking the picture to the physical copy?

The gel transfer process does result in a somewhat tactile surface. This adds to the interpretive possibilities of the work and the images that may be depicted within each piece. These works are created by first printing an image, then coating that image with a gel medium. A new surface, the ground for the final work, is also coated with the same medium. The image is then laid face down on that surface. The paper is washed off after drying and the ink is left behind. The creases and tears occur throughout the process –– by chance and intentionally. Many decisions are made before the work is complete.

“There is a tendency for a mainstream need to know all. Within my series and how I believe Black communities live, this is not preferred.”

When the 2000s arrived, digital culture came with the times. As someone whose practice is so based on touch, tactility, and the analogue process, how did you experience that massive shift?

I was always connected to making from an analogue perspective. My early photographer friends were committed to film. However, I also have graphic design skills that have assisted throughout. I make mockups and sometimes maquettes that I digitally scale up and then print. Within some of my work, the marks of printers can be subtly seen. I am not scared of the digital world, rather, I use it to find ways to push through the visual textures that are more organic and random, those marks that are not associated with machines.

You’re now releasing the book Blur via Free Pony Press. How did this project come up?

The publishers at Free Pony Press contacted me two years ago interested in producing a book specifically on my Blur series. After much discussion and clarification about the series, we began to discuss the physicality of the actual book, wanting it to engage with the fundamental elements of Blur.
Our intention was not to make a catalogue but an artist book, an art object of its own that presents an aspect of the series yet allows a closer look at the surfaces of each piece presented. Blur in book form becomes much more accessible. ‘Readers’ can take more time. Included in the book is a poster that represents the wall work I produced at the Art Gallery of Ontario as part of my exhibition Blur in 2019. This wall piece was installed for over three years and, like all of my works that are transferred to the wall, was sanded down and painted over. I refer to this action as embedding the work into the architecture of the space. Blur at the AGO seemed to make an impact. The poster becomes an offering of the memory of that piece.
The collaboration with Free Pony Press and designer Our Polite Society worked really well. I think because we were not simply making a typical, predictably formatted book, we gave ourselves space to be creative and talk through ideas that related to the underlying intentions of Blur while investigating design possibilities. I learned a lot from this experience.

Photo by Arseni Khamzin

Handpicking images from a vast archive of over nine years must’ve been exhausting. How did you choose what pictures to include and exclude?

The book is a compilation, at actual size, of my 10x7 inch Blur pieces from 2016 and 2019. The amount of pieces in the book refers to a grid I created, of the same amount of Blurs, for my 2019 exhibition at the AGO. It actually was not an exhausting task selecting what to include. At first I randomly selected the ones I wanted, and then played with the order, imagining a fluid movement of the figures coming in and out of a frame one after the other.

Now that almost half a year has passed, what are you most proud of achieving in 2025 so far?

I currently have a Blur wall piece up at LACMA. It is part of an exhibition called Imagining Black Diasporas. I am proud of this piece because of the care that was put in by the installers of that museum. An acquired work, I was not onsite as the steps of the gel transfer I outlined were being enacted. The resultant piece is strong.
And I currently have a work called Fish up at the McMichael Gallery in Kleinburg, Ontario. This work was recently completed and will be up until next year. It comprises a mural along the walls of the low ceilinged gallery space. The transfer is of Guyana’s Essequibo River with drawings of fish, also transferred among the water and floating alone along one of the walls of the museum. A wash of burnt sienna and gold represents the richness of the water that is actually brown and a natural element of Guyana: gold. Storytelling is embedded in this piece that took over two weeks to complete. I use the fish that appears to be in movement below the water metaphorically, relating them to the people moving about and making decisions above. Movement is embedded within the materiality of the gel transfers, as well as in the swimming of the fish. Decisions are constantly being made.

Movement and Identity