NEW YORK STORIES/ Green and Blue Color Trend

Photography: Kat Teutsch

Photography: Kat Teutsch

Photography: Kat Teutsch

Photography: Kat Teutsch

Photography: Kat Teutsch

Photography: Kat Teutsch

Last Monday on Memorial Day, Photographer Kat Teutsch and I got together to work on a shoot we had long spoken about doing, not so much the subject matter to begin with but more that we wanted to create a story together. I met Kat at the opening of Prop Workshop, A great new Prop house in New York some months ago and we had been in contact since. Kat has a very playful light but graphic approach to her work and we both thought we would be a good fit. Over the months I began to loosely form an idea and I began to collect and gather props that seemed to fit.  

I have for a long time wanted to a series of color based stories, Funny enough inspired by fictional characters, eccentric hybrids of personalities I know or admire from a distance in New York. The story you see here is a Blue/ Green Trend based story in essence but to give it a narrative or a thread to hang by while creating the images I had put into words a story that morning of the shoot and had written it down, It went like this:  

Edna Indigo Greenleaf, born July 12^th, 1923

Edna, born somewhere in the Mid West, In the 1960’s she moved to Manhattan, NY, moving to the West Village. Her heritage is vague but she does have some Scandinavian and Greek Heritage. A Professional but single, Her profession is also a little unknown, she is the spinster who lives next door, You know she has been in the building a long long time, but she keeps to herself. Her rent is stabilized. She may have worked in Academia.

Enter into her world and you know she is a travelled woman of whom has a love of Photography and Botanicals, She lives surrounded by treasures of the world, Artifacts from China and other exotic destinations travelled to in her youth when the East was still a mystical place. She loves to paint and while away the hours, A bit of a bower bird with eclectic tastes, She is also the older woman you see in the street with the bright blue bloomer pants and exotic beads, A woman of another era but who also likes to think she keeps up with the times, The New York Times, that is!

Sub consciously Edna is a hybrid of my current next door neighbor, Jazz singer Blossom Dearie who lived in the West Village and a lady I saw on the street years ago on the Upper East side who owned a parrot she kept on her shoulder. It may seem a bit odd to create such characters, but it really helped get into a spirit and mood for the shoot, It’s almost like creating a set for a character in a film. I also liked the idea of throwing out the window the old wives tail "Blue and green should need be seen" which is why exactly I chose those colors to work with. 

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy knowing about the process and enjoy the images from the shoot We had a lot of fun creating them, We plan to create more shoots based on color and colorful characters in the future, stay tuned!   

Thanks to Prop Workshop for the wonderful backgrounds that I rented off them plus a handful of props, Most props seen here I actually own or collected especially for the shoot. Some may recognize it was shot in my apartment, as most self produced shoots are ; )