Brent is based out of New York. He is a senior staff photographer for the Assignment Division for Getty Images. He specializes in documentary work and is known for his alternative approaches to photojournalism and his prolific work rate. He travels an average of 9 months of the year on assignment in his work for Getty Images, working exclusively on commissioned assignment.

Brent holds a degree in Journalism from his native South Africa and photographs to visually interpret a story, often working in tandem with journalists from the world’s leading publications. He works on a regular basis for the Global Business Coalition against Aids and The Global Fund against Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He also works in the field for sustainability for WWF, The World Wide Fund for Nature, shooting global campaigns on the relationship between people and their environments. He recently also began working for the Ford Foundation and the Clinton Foundation. In the last 2 years he works regularly with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour and Anderson Cooper, compiling stills documentaries on topical news events which are then voiced over and aired.

Brent is a multiple award winning photographer, receiving 5 awards from the World Press Photo Foundation and 3 awards from the UN for his humanitarian work, including Awards from the Global fund for his work in the field of HIV. He has finished runner up in the UNICEF/GEO photographer of the year contest. Brent has also been recognized for his work on sexual abuse against women in African conflict and placed second for International Environmental Photographer of the year 2005 in a UNEP run competition. He has received 2 awards from The Society of American Publication designers, the Pictures of the Year contest and has been regularly selected for the Journal of American Photography, Graphis and The London Photographic Awards.

Brent is obsessively preoccupied with getting to the heart of what he is shooting. His tight shooting schedule means that he seeks rapport with his subject immediately, moving towards the essence of the phenomenon he is seeking to reveal as quickly as possible. In this pursuit he often lights his documentary portraiture. “In the cycle of human drama that is constantly presented to a working photo-journalist I think we have to find new ways to tell an old story. If we don’t, we risk that story slipping into oblivion and falling off the radar of collective social responsibility. All I am trying to do is tell that story in the most powerful way I can under the limited circumstance that time brings to any story.”

Brent’s work has appeared in Newsweek, National Geographic, CNN traveler/ CNN.com, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine, The Sunday Times magazine, Le Monde 2, GQ, Geo and many other respected international titles. He also writes a blog for the Discovery Channel which regularly features pictures and stories from his travels.