Katy Grannan Class 7 Entry

Katy Grannan is an American photographer from Arlington, Massachusetts. Her work consists of many different portraits of different kinds of people. Her photographs usually put the subject in awkward positions and places, and the subjects are sometimes wearing revealing clothing, or nude. Grannan's portraits are not conventionally pretty, and don't always depict conventionally attractive people and they are not supposed to. It seems that Katy Grannan likes to explore oddity, and how awkwardness can be achieved.

 

Christopher and Zachary, Bay Farm, Duxbury, MA

I think how subtly strange these pictures interests me, but I am not sure if I really like theses photographs. I am more attracted to aesthetics and how the subjects of pictures look, that is why I like environmental abstraction, it is a kind of photography that plays with distorting and altering aesthetics. I like some portraiture but usually it's in the style of street photography, so they aren't set up like Katy Grannan's work.

 

Addie, b. 1980

However, the more I have been looking at Grannan's, the more I see there is a certain focus on aesthetics. Like I said before, the aesthetics of the settings and subjects are usually odd. Maybe her photos can be considered a kind of situational abstraction. There is no clear reason why these subjects are dressed the way they are and in the places they are. It is like Grannan is abstracting reality. Thinking of her photos like this has started making me appreciate her pieces for their unconventional depictions of unconvenional subjects.

•                                                         Anonymous, Modesto, CA 2012