Brechin Flournoy’s career in the creative arts is a journey of self-invention. Trained as adancer/choreographer and a graduate of Antioch College, Brechin’s career in the performing arts
spanned numerous roles in arts administration- curator and independent producer, consultant, and
small business owner working in PR/Marketing and fundraising.
The creative foundation of Brechin’s work was an outgrowth of her lifelong studies in dance.
In the 90s, Brechin founded and curated the internationally renowned San Francisco Butoh Festival,
which ran for 10 seasons, built a global community and advanced the understanding of Butoh dance.
Brechin was recognized with an SF Bay Guardian GOLDIE Award (Outstanding Local Discovery
Award) and an IZZIE for Sustained Achievement in the Arts. The Festival was featured in two books
published by Routledge Press: “Butoh America” by Tanya Calamoneri (pub. 2022) and Brechin’s
chapter on the festival was included in “Global Butoh in The Routledge Companion to Butoh
Performance,” an academic text edited by Bruce Baird and Rosemary Calendario (pub. 2019).
Brechin’s visual practices span over 35 years of experimentation in performances, installations,
photography, video, and mixed-media designs. Her interpretive photographs are an extension of her
dance training and represent the ongoing conversation between the hidden mysteries in plants and
trees, and self-portraiture. Her moody landscapes are abstractions of natural habitats in the US and
abroad.
Publishing credits: “Science Not Silence,” a book from the National March for Science (pub.
NMS-MIT 2018), and a series of photobooks documenting the community and artistic work of
Flyaway Productions (2018-2023). Brechin’s dance photography has been prominently featured in
the San Francisco Chronicle, international online publications, and marketing campaigns.
Brechin’s unpublished work, “F*ck Strength,” is a 15-year documentation project of her experiences
as a 2x breast cancer survivor. The self-portraits range from documentation to movement-based art
photography and emotional abstracts. “F*ck Strength” is currently being developed into an exhibition.
In 2023, ArtDoc Magazine published two images from the series in the online exhibition Visual
Stories.
Brechin’s street photography focuses on celebrations and mass movements. She was an official
photographer for Carnaval San Francisco, the inaugural Women’s March, the Science March; and
she documented political demonstrations until 2020. As a small business owner, Brechin
photographed over 5,000 young children as a pre-k portrait photographer for clients in the greater
Bay Area.
Photography study: City College SF, workshops with Lois Greenfield, Adobe, and Magnum Photos.
