His search for the light has taken Philip Brubaker to a new level.

The recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro has used knowledge gained through earning a degree in media studies to launch himself as a photographer. His favorite kind of photography is black and white, where light can make or break the picture.

While pondering his next step, he’s concentrating other efforts on trying to learn about the mental condition he was diagnosed with four years ago. Brubaker continually learns coping mechanisms for living with bipolar disease, and he’s looking for others who also struggle with it.

“I notice things about myself and think I must be the only one who feels this way,” Brubaker said. “Then I meet somebody and learn there are others in this world who have this trait.”

He hopes to begin a support group.

“Doctors can explain mental illness in terms of chemicals and subjective facts, but thoughts and feelings can’t really be explained in terms of chemistry. It’s like a mystery. I’m hoping to talk to people who’ve experienced the same things,” he said.

Until his junior year of college, life sailed smoothly for Brubaker. His first year at Chapel Hill High School, which began the week after moving here from Maryland with his family, had its rocky moments, but he made friends, fell into theater and found his way.

He spent two years pursuing a degree in filmmaking at the N.C. School of the Arts before transferring to UNC-Greensboro.

After that transfer, things went wobbly.

“During the first semester, things started to develop until I went into a manic episode,” Brubaker said. “I was 20.”

Brubaker, now 24, described the episode as one with distorted thinking, delusions, loud and aggressive behavior — a basic disconnection from reality.

“My family didn’t know what was going on,” he said.

His mother has a therapist friend in California who happened to call while they were trying to figure out what to do. “My mom told her what was going on. She said, ‘Take him to the hospital,’” he said.

Not only did his parents, Nils and Irena Brubaker, take him to the hospital, they and their adult daughter Natalia, dedicated themselves to learning all they could about their son’s condition.

They enrolled in the Family to Family classes offered by the National Association of Mental Illness of Orange County. For 12 Sundays, they spent three hours with the families of people with mental illness, hearing the others’ stories and learning about the illnesses, medications, manifestations and coping mechanisms available when a loved one receives a diagnosis.

“I came to the meetings feeling particularly vulnerable,” Irena Brubaker said. “It was so early and there was no official diagnosis yet. Philip was scared and we were scared with him. Family to Family took me outside of the illness and connected me to others.”

The family remained steadfast. When Brubaker was released from UNC Hospitals, his mother told him about the STEP Art Gallery in the UNC Neurosciences Hospital, a part of the Schizophrenia Treatment and Evaluation Program, where art produced by mental patients was displayed.

“I submitted a photograph of a sunflower I’d taken,” Brubaker said.

After the photo was accepted into the show, it started a career that Brubaker continues to pursue.

“I sold quite a few pictures, which led to a one-man show and the Web site,” he said.

The one-man show was last summer at Terra Nova Global Properties in Carrboro, and the Web site has opened more opportunities for him.

Brubaker’s photographs have appeared in the “Brushes with Life: Art, Artists and Mental Illness” program organized by the UNC Department of Psychiatry. His photography has been displayed in exhibits at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, at the N.C. Museum of Art and in Iris magazine, a UNC publication. An article about him appeared in the September issue of Clinical Psychiatry News.

“The feedback he got from Brushes with Life gave him the incentive to continue his photography,” Irena said, noting that filmmaking had been his priority before exhibiting his photos. “The first photo he submitted was a sunflower. Weeks after the exhibit he got a call from his first customer — the wife of a local celebrity.”

As a result of the show, a story appeared in The Chapel Hill News before the opening that dealt explicitly with Philip’s illness. “I was the first one in the family to see the paper,” Irena said. She read it and handed it to other family members with a sense of relief. “I said, ‘We don’t have to worry any more about what to tell the neighbors about why Philip took the semester off.’” The relief extended to Philip. “It allowed him to interact with people; it didn’t matter that he had an illness. He was a bipolar photographer. It took the stigma out of the illness.”

As his illness brought opportunities, Philip also saw the relationship between art and illness, as he describes in his Web site:

“My photographs often represent two poles: colorful, euphoric studies of flowers and fruit, etc., and somber black-and-white meditations on decay. I believe these two poles are indicative of the two aspects of my nature, which is a withstanding condition of bipolar disorder. Black and white and color both serve their purposes. Relegating oneself to only one of the two is to deprive yourself of the full spectrum available to photographers.”

Brubaker said lighting guides his quest to find abandoned buildings. “The light brings spirituality to a place that is abandoned,” he said. “It brings beauty to an ugly space. Black-and-white photography is about light and dark and all the shades in-between.”

His next show, another “Brushes with Life” exhibit, will be in February.

“I really love the Brushes with Life gallery,” Brubaker said. “The receptions are a blast.”

While he considers moving to New York, he lives with his parents in their Morgan Creek home and continues to work at Weaver Street Market, where he has worked off and on for the past four years.

“Family support is absolutely essential to make it out of the hard times,” he said. “They’ve been pro-active and shown me the value of doing research. My life would be a tragedy without them — loners can succumb really easily.”

If you are bipolar (or even think you might be), Brubaker would like to meet you. Check his Web site at www.philipbrubaker.com (note only one “l” in Philip) for contact information.