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| p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · A recent portrait of a friend's grand daughter. | |
I've been working on the painterly look for a while now. This is Madison, the grand-daughter of a photographer friend. She's 14 years old.
A little back story added - Madison came into the studio wearing big black plastic glasses, her messy hair down over her face and ultra baggy sweat shirts and track pants. Clearly this was a shy girl, and as a size 8 or so, she was a bit curvier than the other very young girls in her class/friends group, and because of that, she endured a fair bit of teasing. Madison also developed a larger chest, earlier, than most of her friends, and she was taking pains to disguise that from the world - and I would learn later, this was Madison's standard appearance.
To be honest, however, I didn't take much notice of how she was dressed, and just asked her mom to get her into one of the simple unbleached cotton pieces I have set out for this series, which she did and I went about doing what I do.
When I sent the image to Madison and her mom, however, it was a Saturday afternoon. I posted the image on a couple photo forums, and just on my profile on Facebook. By sunday, the image had over 1000 combined likes and more than 100 comments, many of them referring to the 'beautiful' or 'lovely' or 'perfect' model.
I took some screen caps of the photo forums and sent them to Madison's mom, who shared them with Madison.
Then something remarkable happened, and Monday evening, I received the most amazing note I've ever gotten in 10 years of photography....
Apparently, on Monday morning, Madison's mom heard Madison up early for school. When she came down, Madison was doing her hair, putting on some light makeup, and rather than frumpy sweat pants, she was dressed in a dress. She told her mom that for the first time in her life, she felt beautiful.
Honestly, just typing the above still brings a tear to my eye - I have done a lot of photography in the past decade - I've shot fashion in all the major centres and been published in Vogue; but never has anything I have done had 1/10th the effect on someone's life that this simple portrait apparently had.
And it's continued - a couple months later, Madison went out to a model call and was selected for a small local show. She then auditioned for Atlantic Fashion Week and was chosen to walk for two designers.
I'm not sure I've ever been witness to a young girl growing like this in my life, and to have maybe played a small roll in it...it just makes a lot of the other not-so-positive stuff one has to deal with in photography all worth it.
Comments, critiques and feedback appreciated.
Edited on Dec 25, 2015 at 11:23 AM · View previous versions
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