I'm not a crazy roomful-of-newspapers lady-in-training. I am a photo stylist's dream!
Okay, let me back up.
Steve Dunwell and his assistant, Dave Urbina arrived yesterday morning to do the photographs for American Style magazine. They spent most of the day in my studio, taking images of me at work, me with my work, my hands making my work, my work, and shots of items in my studio. Then we broke for lunch (I COOKED, people!) (Well....I grilled ham and cheese sandwiches and made a very nice salad with homemade dressing.) The remaining few hours were spent taking images of my living room with samples of my work and the work of artists and craftspeople I've collected over the years.
Steve and Dave worked like clockwork together. Steve said his favorite assignments were photographing "people in their environments"—which is exactly what this assignment was. He said the best part of the job is he meets such interesting people! Dave has his own growing photography business, specializing in Latino culture and themes.
Things I learned:
1) Some people have a tendency to blink just as the flash goes off, and I am one of them.
2) There are two ways of disguising a winter view for a spring-scheduled article. One is to lower blinds and eliminate the view entirely. The other is to shoot in full sunlight so that the view dissolves into a haze of light. Steve did both.
3) The photographer had to ADD stuff to various shots to achieve even more "density" in the photos.
4) Dust does not show up in photographs!!!
5) I am a photo stylist's dream!
Steve and Dave with enchanted with my studio. They said yes, there is a lot of stuff, but it's wonderful stuff and beautifully organized. I said, well, not always. And Steve said oh, I'm sure it gets messy when you work, but you can still see the bones of the organization—and it's lovely.
He said it was going to be enjoyable to shoot because everywhere he looked, there were fabulous "views".
He love, love, loved the printer's chest with the type drawers filled with beads, all sorted by color, and the trays filled with small artifacts, toys and knick-knacks. He took many shots of the chest from the top down, with multiple opened drawers. He said, "Do you realize photo stylists would spend hours, days to set up a shot like this? And you just have it in your studio as part of your bead stock!"
The me-in-the-middle-of-my-studio shot was fascinating. It was taken from above eye-level, surrounded by my sewing table and my jewelry-making station. I look like I'm in the middle of a galaxy of beads, fabric and threads, all the "ingredients" of my work spiraling gently around me. I look like the creative force in my universe. It's an amazing shot, and yet, I was astonished how orderly everything looks. It looks like functional chaos.
Steve kept looking through the viewfinder and saying, "Okay, I need something tall and narrow-ish for this spot that we can "see" through but adds texture..." and I'd say, "I probably have something" and he'd say, "I KNOW you do!" and we'd find it. Every single time.
So the short story is, I may have missed my calling in life as a photo stylist, or maybe I just get the fun of knowing there IS such a calling—and enjoy it!
And as I sit in my no-longer-cluttered but rather "visually dense" studio, I also have another insight. This studio is truly a metaphor for my mind and my artistic vision. It is layered, it is messy, it is eclectic, it is intricate. It daunts some and astounds others. Everywhere you look, there is evidence of someone who has looked at something others have overlooked—and found it fascinating, rich, deserving of another look. There a small groupings that suddenly become more than each separate thing—gestalt made visible in the universe.
There are true artifacts, and my artifacts, the old and the new, the wonderful and the mundane, the poignant and the whimsical, all woven invisibly together to tell a new story. Nothing perfect, nothing precious, yet all brought together and transformed into something...else.
Yup. That's me all over.
