steven

steven

Steven Townshend is a fine art/portrait photographer and writer with a background in theatre, written narrative, and award-winning game design. As a young artist, Steven toured the US and Canada performing in Shakespeare companies while journaling their moments on paper and film. In his transition from stage to page, Steven continued to work as a theatre photographer, capturing dramatic scenes while incorporating elements of costume, makeup, and theatrical lighting in his work. Drawn to stories set in other times and places, Steven creates works through which fellow dreamers and time travelers might examine their own humanity or find familiar comfort in the reflections of the people and places of a distant era.

May 10, 2021

Chasing the Eclipse

Looking back at the full solar eclipse of 2017 as we pass through the metaphorical eclipse of 2020–2021…
May 3, 2021

May the Fourth Be with You Always

May the Fourth Be with You! The featured portrait is Sith Lord Kim Fukawa, preceding a retrospective on Tabitha Burch's October 2019 Star Wars shoot where we used colored gels to make…
April 26, 2021

Loki of the Jazz Age

This week, we present the latest, and possibly last, image in the gender-bent Jazz Age superhero costume series from designer Erin Gallagher. As the series concludes, we feature a guest editorial from…
April 19, 2021

Thor of the Jazz Age

We return to designer Erin Gallagher's gender-bent Jazz Age superhero costume series with model Freja Johanson as the mighty Thor…
April 8, 2021

Painting the Kami

Distant Era is about images and stories of other times and places. Tabletop and role-playing games are gateways to immersion in fantasy, history, science-fiction, and mythology, and they’ve been a way of…
March 29, 2021

Ada and the Projection

In which we explore the thrills and challenges of shooting with digital projections with Brookelyn Hébert for The Artistic Home's 2019 production of Ada and the Engine, by Lauren Gunderson.…
March 22, 2021

The First Gig

In which we look back upon our very first photography gig, courtesy of Babes With Blades Theatre Company.…

The All Worlds Traveller

The All Worlds Traveller is an eclectic collection of thoughts, pictures, and stories from Distant Era. Illustrated with Distant Era art and photographs, these pages explore the stories and worlds of people beyond the here and now, and the people and creative processes behind such stories. This is a blog about photography and narrative; history and myth; fantasy, science-fiction, and the weird; creation and experience. This is a blog about stories.

Steven Townshend

Steven Townshend is a fine art/portrait photographer and writer with a background in theatre, written narrative, and award-winning game design. As a young artist, Steven toured the US and Canada performing in Shakespeare companies while journaling their moments on paper and film. In his transition from stage to page, Steven continued to work as a theatre photographer, capturing dramatic scenes while incorporating elements of costume, makeup, and theatrical lighting in his work. Drawn to stories set in other times and places, Steven creates works through which fellow dreamers and time travelers might examine their own humanity or find familiar comfort in the reflections of the people and places of a distant era.

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About a Distant Era

Distant Era creates fine art and portrait photographs of people and places from imagined pasts, possible futures, and magical realities. In collaboration with other artists, we evoke these distant eras with theatrical costume and makeup, evocative scenery, and deliberate lighting, and we enhance them with contemporary tools to cast these captured moments in the light of long ago or far away.

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