Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. positions his portrait practice within intimate spaces, often taking place in domestic settings such as the yard, front porch, or living room. Brown’s portraiture favors a calculated distance between his subject and the viewer. Abstracted notions of the body figure more prominently than his subjects’ faces, which are often obscured or excluded entirely. The tilting diagonals of the surrounding architecture further signal Brown’s avoidance of an informative, frontal view. The obfuscation of his subjects challenges the traditional hierarchy held within photography, which for so long has privileged the viewer’s ability to gaze versus the privacy of the subject. For Brown, the use of shadow, cropping, focus, and composition are all employed as tools that slow down the act of looking. The result is a more profound articulation of the interior or physiological space of his subject, as opposed to a portrait of their physical likeness.