American Photo on Campus: November 2009
"Fairy Tale Fashion: How Savannah College of Art and Design's Jennifer Hathorn subverts the fables we grew up with.
Noodles-"lots and lots of ramen noodles"-were the secret ingredient behind Jennifer Hathorn's storybook inspired fashion photos. That low-cost diet left more cash for the truckloads of props that helped the SCAD senior bring Alice in Wonderland and the Princess and the Pea (not to mention Aladdin, Snow White, and Little Red Riding Hood) to quirky life.
Hathorn created her fairy tale series for a recent portfolio class in which students were given free range to create whatever kinds of images they felt would show off their talents. "I was inspired by Annie Leibovitz's recent ads for Disney," she says. "But I wanted to do something that was less straightforward, more style-driven." To that end she created an oversized Afro out of pink paper for her Alice, and dressed her Princess in background matching colors (though still posed her atop a pile of mattresses). And she directed her model, who also happens to be her roommate, to assume a persona that was more fashion vixen than storybook innocent.
With this project, the aspiring fashion photographer began to find her own outlandish style. "I like to bring my imagination to a shoot, and build the photography through crazy makeup and styling," says Hathorn, who describes her dorm room as a "prop closet." But crazy doesn't mean undisciplined: Hathorn first sketched out the composition she envisioned for each fairy tale photo, right down to the tilt of Alice's teapot. "After I get the shot exactly as it looks in my head, I can put on a little music and improvise," she says. "But the idea I have going is usually the best one." -Miranda Crowell
When I finally got my copy I was surprised to see I had a photo on the Table of Contents page as well.
