7/25
How long have you been a photographer? What pushed you on this path in the beginning?
I’ve been shooting professionally for exactly 20 years this summer, starting in college, even though I was studying Art History. An assignment in a Radical Imagery course tasked me with creating a photo series that exemplified the tenets we had learned in the class, and being the lone art history student (and a feminist art history student at that), I began by shooting erotica rooted in the concept that art history does not recognize pornographic content as “art”, despite the fact that the process by which pornographic content is made is identical to how “art” in the same medium is produced; only the intent differs. So it was essentially a series of sexually explicit images produced with “artistic intent”, mostly to demonstrate how arbitrary and ridiculous that designation could be. The series ended up in the hands of a local (Washington DC) gallery owner who happened to be curating a massive show that summer, and he asked to feature some of my work. It was written about in the Washington City Paper, and I garnered a small reputation for a while, showcased in other galleries, and won awards. The sexual harassment I incurred from all this got to me after a while though, so erotica turned into fashion photography, which eventually turned into beauty photography.
Have you always wanted to make art?
Absolutely. I think artists, regardless of the medium, have a compulsion to create. It’s like breathing. We don’t have a choice, we just have to do it. I’ve been artistic since I could literally stand as an infant—my mother would line the shower walls with butcher paper and let me draw and paint as long as I wanted. I took classes in multiple mediums through childhood and my teen years, then essentially lived in the Art Department in college, and now I’m a professional photographer. It feels like a very natural progression.
Tell us about your favourite shoot.
I don’t think I have a favorite shoot, but I especially enjoy shoots that ask or allow for extensive creative problem solving. I love thinking *around* a problem to find the most interesting solution. Shooting beauty is perfect for that since there are only so many ways you can showcase makeup. How do you compel a person to be interested in something they’ve seen a thousand times before?
What inspires you?
Possibility. I see the potential of everything. There’s what something is, and there’s what it could be, and that gap in between makes my brain buzz in the best way.
How would you characterize your style?
Sensorial. Textural. Intimate. Authentic.
What advice would you give to a beginning photographer?
