This site began in 1996, a fairly early date in the history of the Internet--at least the popular use of the Internet. Eric Szerbinski had recently begun managing a site for Suzanne Vega (songwriter friend of mine), and he approached me with the idea of creating a homepage for me as a related artist. It would be attached to Suzanne's homepage, but would be an independent site. Here's what it looked like in 1997:

Or go here via the Wayback Machine to see the whole thing.

For the first six months or so I sent Eric materials to be uploaded, but eventually I realized that I wanted to expand the site substantially, and ultimately wanted control over the design as well as content. So, in 1998 I took over running the website, and have done it myself ever since. Over time it became a vehicle for exhibiting my work, both photography and songwriting, and it receives a great deal of traffic for an individual non-commercial site. The New York Times has recommended it twice, and the Lost Border project has been linked to by major media outlets including Time Magazine, CNN, the Times of London and the Guardian.

Here's what brianrose.com looked like in 1998:

The site continues to grow, and takes a good deal of tending and feeding. The basic layout is done with Macromedia's Dreamweaver, and various graphic elements were done with Fireworks and Flash. All the photography is done on Photoshop. I have never liked Flash websites--find them needlessly complex with lots of pointless movement, and rarely a good environment for displaying photographs. So, I have stuck with basic html and kept things relatively simple.