25 365’s, The Eagle, Brighton, until July 31 (From The Argus)

25 365’s, The Eagle, Brighton, until July 31

4:56pm Thursday 16th July 2009 in Search By Nione Meakin

More usually found behind the camera, every single day for a year Brighton photographer Adam Bronkhorst instead turned his lens on himself and took a self-portrait, in a fascinating, if time-consuming, project.

His challenge, inspired by similar ventures being undertaken by the online community, started out as a bid to make him think more creatively in his photography. It was harder than he had imagined. “I started off doing arm’s length snap shots,” he says, “but I quickly ran out of ideas. It’s quite difficult to take a different picture of yourself every day!” To meet his self-imposed goal, Adam, one of three photographers who founded the innovative Garage Studios in North Laine just over a year ago, soon found himself in all manner of odd costumes, self-made sets and unusual locations. The results can be seen in his exhibition at The Eagle, in which he is displaying 25 of his favourite shots from the series.

“Sometimes I was inspired by what was happening in the world , sometimes I’d have things planned out for weeks in advance,” he explains. For one week, he wore a Mexican wrestling mask as he went about the various stages of his morning routine; on Burns Night he donned a kilt and visited Bramber Castle to take his photograph, while on Boxing Day he is pictured in gloves, “boxing” with young relatives.

Each day, he uploaded that day’s image to photo-sharing website Flickr under the monicker The Brownhorse. The experience was at times unexpectedly humorous.

After posting one photo taken with the Dover cliffs as a backdrop, he joked that the council painted the landmark white every year to keep it looking fresh – an irony lost on website visitors from across the Atlantic. At times, it was sad: “We had to have our cat put down suddenly and my wife and I were really upset. I really didn’t want to take a photo that day, but of course I had to. It represents a real journey through my life.”

Adam isn’t in any rush to embark on another year-long project but has plans for something of a similar scale – creating a series that explores the interaction between couples in which he swaps the faces of each pair. “It creates these images that are very androgynous and looks at the idea that people might not be who they are without this other person.”

• Open daily, free, call Garage Studios on 01273 609669.For more information, visit Adam’s site www.flickr.com/photos/the_brownhorse