Nicole, Sunnydale Avenue (II)
2006, printed 2007

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.