Two of my favorite photographers, Nan Goldin and Kelli Connell, focus on intimacy in their work. The more I study their images, the more I feel their work touches on the elusive quality that surrounds friendship and love. This summer I wanted to create a photograph for Anisocoria that touched on my own experience with intimacy.

Traveling can be helpful to think outside of the box. I often find that as I am brainstorming a location for a photoshoot, I am going off a short list, and things start to gain a similar quality. I wanted to create something with an unconventional composition and a different color scheme that I normally gravitate towards. Having access to a pool while I was in Culebra provided me with a perfect opportunity to explore a different scene.

A few months ago I did a photoshoot at one of my favorite book store’s of all time, Lyrical Ballads. I stumbled into the store four or five years ago and fell in love – they have a huge variety of books and a seemingly never ending supply of them. As you walk through the store you realize that behind one tower of books, there is another room, with more antiques and treasures to be discovered. I had been eyeing the store as a photoshoot location for years, so I finally got up my courage to ask if I might be able to do a photoshoot for my project. 

Audrey is a fascinating, incredibly caring and talented person, and I was so lucky to become friends with her at Skidmore, and we ended up living together our senior year. I wanted to interview Audrey for this project because I knew, even though we became very close senior year, I had not heard all of her stories and she had a unique upbringing and outlook on life.