From Silver Screen to Shutter Clicks: Austin O’Brien’s Creative Metamorphosis

Once a familiar face in 90s blockbusters, Austin O’Brien, known for his roles in “The Last Action Hero” and “My Girl 2,” has now embraced a new creative endeavor. Shifting from the silver screen to the lens, O’Brien is making waves as a photographer, showcasing his work on Instagram.

A Star in the Making

Austin O’Brien’s acting career began at a tender age. He gained prominence in a Circuit City commercial that catapulted him into the limelight before he even turned ten. This early success paved the way for roles alongside Hollywood legends like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dan Aykroyd, Macaulay Culkin, and Jamie Lee Curtis.

O’Brien’s performances in “The Last Action Hero” and “My Girl 2” left an indelible mark on the hearts of moviegoers. Despite his youth, he held his own among seasoned actors, proving his talent and dedication to the craft.

The Lure of the Lens

After working intermittently in the early 2000s, O’Brien found a new passion in photography. He attributes his transition to learning on film, which he believes has given him a profound understanding of light and composition.

“There’s something magical about working with film,” O’Brien shares. “It forces you to slow down, think, and truly see the world around you.”

Married to Kristin Wurgler since 2006, O’Brien’s photographic journey is as much about capturing memories for others as it is about creating unique experiences for his clients.

A New Canvas

Transitioning from acting to photography might seem like a leap, but for O’Brien, it was a natural progression. Both mediums tell stories, but photography offered him a different perspective.

“As an actor, you’re part of someone else’s story,” O’Brien explains. “But as a photographer, you get to create the narrative. Every image is a moment frozen in time, waiting to be discovered.”

Today, O’Brien’s Instagram feed is a testament to his artistry. Each photograph is a visual tale, capturing the essence of his subjects with striking clarity and emotional depth.

In the end, Austin O’Brien’s story is one of transformation and resilience. From the silver screen to the lens, he continues to capture hearts and minds, proving that creativity knows no bounds.

As we look back at Austin O’Brien’s journey from child actor to photographer, it becomes clear that his path was not merely a transition, but a creative metamorphosis. His ability to adapt and thrive in different artistic landscapes underscores the power of resilience and the boundless nature of human creativity.

Today, O’Brien continues to craft unique visual narratives, inviting us to see the world through his lens. His work serves as a reminder that sometimes, the most extraordinary stories are those that unfold when we dare to embrace change and explore new horizons.

“Their characters seemed to come from the sky itself, and … formed a huge theatrical stage that transcended the confines of reality, transporting a collective of sleepwalkers to a dreamworld,” he wrote. “I wandered among them and photographed them quietly, because I did not want to wake them up.”

The conceptual Leica Multi multitool has been designed by Marco Barbosa as a branded accessory for photography enthusiasts alike to choose for their collection. The accessory is constructed with the design aesthetic of the photography brand in mind and merges it with the functionality of a product from Leatherman. The tool has a machined aluminum body that calls to mind the latest Leica camera models and will thus fit in seamlessly with a photographer’s existing everyday carry (EDC).

The conceptual Leica Multi multitool incorporates a wide range of features and functions, and will even attach onto the bottom section of your camera to keep it on hand at all times when out shooting in the field.

Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, which explores what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world.

In photographer Zhang Xiao’s images of the Shehuo festival, an ancient celebration still observed in parts of northern China during the Lunar New Year, rural life comes alive with something altogether more fantastical.

Villagers dressed as cranes, roosters and mythical lions pose for portraits standing amid crops or in fallow farmland. Costumed performers parade past brick houses against hazy backdrops, the eyes of their masks seemingly lost in thought. In a harvested wheat field, a group of almost a dozen men line up to hold aloft a colorful dragon puppet.

In his new book “Community Fire,” Zhang said he wanted to capture the surreal “disconnect” between people’s everyday lives and the mythical personas they assumed.

“Their characters seemed to come from the sky itself, and … formed a huge theatrical stage that transcended the confines of reality, transporting a collective of sleepwalkers to a dreamworld,” he wrote. “I wandered among them and photographed them quietly, because I did not want to wake them up.”

Rooted in millennia-old agricultural practices of worshipping fire and the land, the folk rituals of Shehuo (often translated as “earth and fire”) traditionally entailed praying for good fortune and bounteous harvests, or to drive away demons. Festivities vary between regions but now typically see various performers, from stilt walkers to opera singers, parading through the streets or staging shows.

Today, celebrations coincide with the Lunar New Year, which started on Saturday. As such, they have come to encompass many of the traditions — such as temple fairs and lion dances — practiced around China during this period. (Lunar New Year celebrations usually last more than two weeks, with Shehuo festival taking place on the season’s 15th and final day.)

Shehuo celebrations have been recognized by the Chinese government in its UNESCO-style list of “intangible cultural heritage.” But the festival’s place in a rapidly urbanizing country remains under threat, said Zhang, adding that most of the performers he encountered had migrated to cities and only returned to their villages for the holiday.

“The significance of traditional customs can no longer meet the needs of modern lives,” the photographer told CNN via email. “Today’s young people are more concerned about the internet and games. They are not even willing to try and understand traditional cultures. I think that’s sad.”

E-commerce and the death of craft

Hoping to document the festival’s disappearing traditions — and the costumes and props associated with them — Zhang spent over a decade photographing Shehuo events at villages in Shaanxi and Henan provinces. A selection of the images, which were shot between 2007 and 2019, is currently on show in the US at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology (and over 100 of them were published in “Community Fire”).

As well as capturing rites, rituals and folklore, the photos speak to the proliferation of mass-produced paraphernalia that has transformed the festival since the turn of the 21st century. One image depicts a stack of expressionless plastic masks; a set of 12 eerie pictures shows smiling prop heads hanging from trees in flimsy carrier bags.

Several pages of Zhang’s book are dedicated to screengrabs of Alibaba-owned shopping platform, Taobao, where Shehuo items can be purchased at bargain prices. They range from an elaborate two-person lion dance costume, offered for just 360 yuan ($50), to a selection of headdresses priced under 17 yuan ($2.40).

The rise of cheap goods and e-commerce has been a mixed blessing for these villages. Some of them — including Huozhuang, in Henan province, which features heavily in Zhang’s project — have taken advantage of the opportunity. The photographer visited and documented several small family workshops that buy semi-complete products in large quantities online before hand-finishing them and selling them on platforms like Taobao for profit.

“In some villages, virtually the entire population has been mobilized to produce and sell Shehuo props,” the photographer writes in his book.

But with economic opportunity comes a loss of traditional skills and customs. Materials like paper and bamboo have been replaced by cheap wire frames, plastic and synthetic fabrics, said Zhang, who grew up in a rural area of China’s Shandong province but is now based in Chengdu, one of the country’s largest metropolises in the southwest.

A third-generation prop maker told Zhang that, in the photographer’s words, that he “lamented the gradual disappearance of traditional crafts.” But most of the villagers the photographer encountered were indifferent to the loss of cultural heritage, he claimed.

And while Zhang, as a documentarian, assumed the role of a “quiet spectator” while on assignment, he nonetheless expressed regret at the festival’s rapid commercialization.

“People are not focused on how to improve product quality and craftsmanship,” said the photographer, who is currently working on a documentary about life in rural China.

“Instead, they are obsessed with how to manufacture these products as quickly as possible, and at the lowest cost, so as to gain an advantage against the competition. This has led to a gradual decline in product quality, and the entire industry has fallen into a vicious cycle of price wars.”

“Community Fire,” published by Aperture and Peabody Museum Press, is available now. An accompanying exhibition is on show at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology in Cambridge, Massachusetts until April 14, 2024.

It’s the middle of Summer in Sydney, but a cool change is sweeping through as visual artist Sammy Hawker sets up a tripod on the blustery harbour foreshore.

Atop it, she balances a large-format film camera — Hawker is well-practised at working with the elements.

She sets up her shot, a moody ocean-scape, and pulls a striped towel over her head. With one precise click, she captures the scene on a single slide of negative.

Hawker is known for her experimental photography. She “co-creates” artworks with elements of the natural environment and found materials within it.

She has previously encrusted film negatives in honeycomb, used caterpillar remains found in a trough to produce butterfly wing-like forms, and used analogue techniques to give a second life to human ashes.

Her current project, titled [holding] space, seeks to share some of that creative licence with the iconic, chronically over-photographed Sydney Harbour.

She collects saltwater from the harbour to help develop the film, which corrodes and marks the negative to compelling effect.

“The more that I continue working with different materials, the more I see that materials have memory or hold memory and there’s a kind of resonance inscribed within them of what has come before,” says Hawker.

“The beautiful thing about being an artist is that, maybe there is no way I can scientifically prove that, but you can suggest it through working with the materials and showing the work.

Stories in sediment

Hawker has long been fascinated by Sydney Harbour, on Gadigal and Birrabirragal Country.

Her work is informed by conversations with traditional custodians, scientists and researchers, and draws on the rich sediment of the harbour — from its sandstone bedrock to its colonial history — to unearth “memories”.

The sandstone Sydney is built upon formed from grains of sand, derived from rocks that existed between 500–700 million years ago, Hawker explains.

“[It’s] made up of individual grains of silica sand that had travelled in a river from what’s now eastern Antarctica, and [at the time] Sydney was a swamp, so it kind of got stuck here and formed this rock.

From the geological to the topographical and historical, Hawker is also interested in the history of Sydney Harbour’s water and its role as a “holding space”.

“Sydney Harbour itself was a river — what’s now known as Parramatta River — but in the last Ice Age, which was 10,000 years ago, the ocean water rose and that’s when it became a harbour,” says Hawker.

“[In this project], I’m looking at the idea that water is a carrier of memory, particularly this harbour water.

“[It] circulates slowly around [Sydney] Harbour and carries these memories — everything from the dark history of colonisation, to the tributaries and dendritic patterns that used to run through estuaries and the river underneath, to the fact that the ocean water was created with comets and solar dust, and that kind of interstellar resonance, which appears on the photographs.”

The power of old film

To capture these ancient stories, Hawker shoots on old film cameras — both large and medium format — and employs laborious analogue processing techniques.

“The cameras have their own stories,” says Hawker.

“I really like working with film because [it feels] like a canvas and a really beautiful material to work with. Coming from a digital documentary and video background, there’s been something so nice in using my hands to make a photograph, rather than take a photograph.”

After finishing a roll of film — roughly 10–12 images in medium format — Hawker hands me her camera, picks up a jar and wades into the ocean. She fills the jar with briny water, which she’ll use later when she processes the roll.

Processing in saltwater

Sitting on Woollahra’s Redleaf Jetty, I watch Hawker feel her way around a black bag with armholes as she carefully transfers the light-sensitive film into canisters.

This process is usually done in a darkroom: if the film sees light before developing, it becomes overexposed and turns out blank. But with Hawker’s black-out bag — her makeshift darkroom — she can process film on location.

“I really love it because my whole practice is about working with site and I think there’s something in processing [in that environment] that’s so much nicer.”

Once in the canisters, Hawker uses three chemicals to process the film. First, she immerses it in a developer (pre-mixed with harbour water), then a stop bath solution to halt the developing process, and a fixer, to affix the image to the negative.

“Film is basically an alchemy of light and time,” Hawker explains as she works.

“When you’re taking a photograph, you think about the shutter speed, the aperture and the ISO, depending on the light conditions, so it’s the same thing when you’re processing film.

“The process is kind of fixing the image that you’ve taken through the camera onto the film. But then I put the image back in the jar of the harbour water, and the fixer doesn’t really do his job because the harbour water takes the image away again.

In the jar, the harbour water begins to corrode the image, leaving curious imprints and patterns.

“[There’s] this feeling that it’s breaking open the four walls of the frame and making its mark; adding its own voice to the process,” says Hawker.

“I’ve just had such consistently beautiful results, and the more that I work with it, the [more] recurring patterns will appear … like these crosses that come up from time to time.

“To me, they’re a sign of sentience or a kind of presence. There’s this real feeling whenever they appear, the photograph has a lot of power to it.”

Punk science

Before we look at the developed images, Hawker shows me the other project she’s been working on as part of her residency with Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf (Gadigal & Birrabirragal Country).

She’s experimenting with chromatography, a technique invented by a Russian-Italian botanist in the 1900s, involving separating plant pigments using chemicals.

Today it is used widely in agronomy by scientists and farmers to check soil quality, explains Hawker.

With her “punk science” approach to art, Hawker has been adapting this process by using organic matter found in and around the harbour: from washed-up seaweed to leaves from harbourside figs.

As the chemical compounds of the matter separate on round filter papers, different colours, forms and patterns appear.

“They’re just amazing, they’re so varied. You can’t predict how it’s going to turn out,” says Hawker.

Hawker soaks the original papers in silver nitrate, which allows them to continue developing over time.

“It has the feeling of a living object,” she says.

The film reveal

On the jetty at dusk, Hawker strings up her final shots: glimpses of sandstone, harbourside trees and ocean shores filling her square frames.

But while Hawker’s take is captured, it’s time to let the salty harbour water, sloshing below us, have its say.

“If an image is interesting, I’ll scan it in just to have a record of it, and then I’ll put it back in a jar of the harbour water and allow that kind of corrosion process to continue,” says Hawker.

“The image generally goes through various states of deterioration until I arrive at a point, which is really beautiful and magical.

“Sometimes they just disappear completely and there’s nothing left, but that’s all part of the process.”