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Katy Grannan

Nicole, Sunnydale Avenue (II)
2006, printed 2007

Not on view

Date
2006, printed 2007

Classification
Photographs

Medium
Inkjet print

Dimensions
Image: 40 × 50in. (101.6 × 127 cm)

Accession number
2008.20

Series
The Westerns

Edition
1/6

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Photography Committee

Rights and reproductions
(c) Katy Grannan, courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Greenberg Von Doren Gallery, New York

API
artworks/33011

Nicole, Sunnydale Ave. (II) is part of a series that Katy Grannan titled The Western, which focuses on habitués (including cross-dressers and transgender men and women) of San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area. For this series, Grannan approached potential subjects, asking if they were willing to model for her, and then photographed them again and again–often many times a week–in relentless sunlight. The resulting photographs, capturing the sitters in compositions achieved through a collaboration between photographer and model, are voyeuristic, often surprisingly intimate, portraits of near-total strangers. Grannan met Nicole, the subject of this portrait, in San Francisco, characterizing her as “the most uninhibited person I have ever known. Nicole would just take her clothes off and do whatever she pleased, completely careless of her surroundings. She was so challenging and wonderful to work with because I had so little control. Over time, she has made my work better.”

Series title, "The Westerns," added to TMS on Sep-15-2016 following Curatorial's research in conjunction with the Human Interest rotation.