Over two weekends in 2017, and two cities New York and Los Angeles, Bil Brown set up a reflective material that “moved like liquid” to create a series of photos that would surprise and attract, repel and shock. This started the Mylar experiment, a photographic process that would reveal more than was expected at each viewing. The photographic process of using mylar as a reflective surface for photography and cinematography was historically used by the American poet/photographer Ira Cohen in the 1960s. Brown set out to revive and expand on the psychedelic portraits of Cohen, bringing the process into the digital era, and comment on the mutable and artificial aspect of commercial fashion imagery, portraiture, and subjugated identity in his Mylar series. Brown states, “The more that I delved into the images, the more I saw incredible projections of identity that the cameras captured and I would have not seen if I would have simply taken a portrait of a posed model.”

MYLAR has been featured in Leica Fotografie International, Leica S magazine, FLAUNT magazine, Purple Fashion magazine and as a gallery show at two galleries simultaneously in Vienna, Austria; Desidero One and Leica Gallery Vienna. 

MYLAR is now showing for the first time in the United States at The Rangefinder Gallery at TAMARKIN CAMERA in Chicago during (and after) Leicapalooza 2025, and will be on exhibition from July 11 - September 30, 2025 in an edition of 10.

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