Jungle Joules and the Camera That Loves Her

Juliette Dominique Brown calls herself the Colombian Frida Kahlo, which is either an act of supreme confidence or a precise self-assessment—possibly both. Her friends call her Jungle Joules, which sounds like a name you’d give someone who once macheted through an actual jungle, though the energy behind it probably applies more to the way she moves through creative spaces: with momentum and color and a refusal to be ordinary.

Brown works as both photographer and painter, primarily interested in people she finds compelling. Her Instagram has the quality of a working visual journal—food, beaches, faces, the texture of a life lived with deliberate attention to how things look. There’s warmth in the palette across everything she makes, a physicality to the compositions that feels distinctly Colombian in its lushness without being self-conscious about it.

She’s also an object of other people’s attention. Seoul-born, Brooklyn-based artist Insuh Yoon photographed her for his portfolio, which maps the faces of people he finds striking. Brown fits easily into that project. There’s something specific about being both observer and observed—a photographer who also gets photographed, a painter who is also painted. She seems comfortable in both positions, which probably says something about knowing who you are before a lens finds you.