Award of Excellence in Communication Arts Magazine

An image I made for Jon Ferguson Theater's production "Supermonkey," performed at the Guthrie Theater in 2009 was awarded a place in the advertising section of the prestigious 2010 Communication Arts Photography Annual. The original piece of theater was created by Jon and the ensemble out of improvisational exercises. It explored the lives of tenants in a chic modern high rise who feel very avant garde but are revealed to not be as evolved as fully as they would like society to think. The image we created needed to show the evolution of man in one image - ape to modern man. I lit the image with a stark feel - like a diorama at a natural history museum - to highlight our lack of evolution. I worked closely with talented actor Tyson Forbes to transform his physicality - posture, hand positioning and gait - to fit the feel we were looking for. The tragicomic image was chosen as one of 300 images from a juried 13,000 image contest of over 6,000 entries. I've included the printed version which was designed by innovative theater maker Jon Ferguson. See his link and links to Communication Arts and the Guthrie above.

Supermonkey Cast Potrtaits

I was commissioned to created a series of character portraits for the Supermonkey show after I created the lead image that won a place in Communication Arts Magazine 2010 Photography Annual. I art directed these as well as shooting them because they were done while rehearsals were in progress. I scouted exterior building walls in different parts of the warehouse district and the Seward neighborhoods in Minneapolis that matched the characters' costumes. My vision for this series of images was to create monochromatic portraits that would give the characters as they saw themselves in the play a one dimensional feel - a commentary on our public faces that often stand in opposition to our private selves. I also find that the character faces stand out more prominently when I match wardrobe to background. I matched the lighting in this series to the main promotional image that we'd created two weeks before. The scouting took some time but I was amazed at how many colored walls and doors I found in such close proximity to the rehearsal space. The nuance came in finding the wall textures that best helped to support the specific portraits. I created 13 portraits in 13 different locations for this project.