How a childhood of dress-up in Appalachia led to photographing a drag queen on a designer chair in Florence

My BackgrounD

I have always loved dressing up.

I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains at Penland School of Craft, where both of my parents worked, and I basically grew up on campus. Playing — in every sense of the word — wasn't just allowed there, it was encouraged. There was an eccentric local woman who collected costumes and jewelry from antique shops, and every Christmas, to my absolute delight (and my probably parents' mild horror), she'd leave trunks and trash bags full of "goodies" on our doorstep.

Most little girls love to dress up. But my love never stopped — it just changed shape. It turned into styling and photographing other people, but the thing underneath it never moved: I love the over-the-top, and I love watching someone transform.

In high school, I built full sets and shot them on a point-and-shoot camera. (Mercifully, those photos no longer exist.) I made dresses out of trash bags and made friends with seamstresses. I never cared as much about the fashion design itself — I cared about capturing the moment it created. Then I took a three-year detour into contemporary jewelry design. And I learned the same thing all over again: I liked documenting the making far more than I liked making.

What pulled me back into photography was being asked to assist Nicholas Kahn's narrative storytelling class. Every single person in that course was hyper-energetic and desperate to play in the most over-the-top ways possible — my kind of people.

So when you ask me what I photograph now, the honest answer is: I don't have a tidy label for it. Not quite fashion, not quite editorial, not quite documentary. If I had to call it anything, I'd call it storytelling — and usually the best stories come from saying yes to, well, anything.

Meet Althea and The Shire Studio

Back in June, I was waiting in line for the bathroom at a concert in Florence when a friend of a friend was introduced to me. "You're a photographer, great! I am looking to do a project!" she said. I thought: cool, maybe a new client — but also, she has no idea what my work looks like, and I don't know hers either. I meet lots of people who say they want to do a photoshoot. And many times, nothing comes of it.

The next week, she called me with a fantastic project — everything I want in a shoot, wrapped up in one phone call.

Althea is an interior designer in Florence, known for fabulously quirky, colorful designs that don't take themselves too seriously. Among her pieces is a clever, genuinely ingenious chair that turns into a step-stool called the "Ornella." She wanted new photos of it.

Product photography? No problem, I do plenty of that. "White background?" I asked, already half-picturing the lighting setup.

No. The Shire Studio didn't need a white background. They needed a drag queen splayed dramatically across a rainbow-colored set of Ornella stools, shot to commemorate the Stonewall riots on June 28th.

Now we were talking.

The Shoot

Lalique Chouette was our muse: tall, gorgeous, a little bit '80s — which I love. We shot the entire thing inside Althea's own home, an almost-finished space she'd designed herself, where the rainbow Ornella chairs looked completely at home in the beautiful chaos around them.

We'd met at the start of June and needed final images published by the 28th, so there wasn't much time to plan. Turns out, that's actually my favorite way to work — a strong concept and the right elements in the room, and a lot of spontaneity. There was this electric, unscripted energy running through the whole shoot. We just played.

This is exactly the kind of project I want finding me — and me finding it.

So if you're into drag, into dress-up, or you've got a killer idea you're dying to make real, come find me. I'm always looking for more magic.