The Photos I Took in 2024 That I Liked
It was a pretty good year.
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I can’t believe it’s the last two days of 2024. The year always feels long, and then December bulldozes any perception of time, flattening it into a binger of alcohol and end-of-year lists. My memories of how I got from Thanksgiving to here are fuzzy.
Cocktail party, LA for Apparatus. What happens when I look through a Rene Magritte art book before a shoot.
Trump supporters at Madison Square Garden rally for Die Zeit. Photographing at MSG was a conflict between focusing on people showcasing Trump paraphernalia and avoiding taking a bunch of sensationalist photos. I wrote about how photographers (myself included) tend to isolate the most flamboyant individuals, but that most people at Trump rallies look regular. I kept this in mind when looking for subjects to photograph, searching not only for the most conspicuously dressed but also for the most ordinary. When I wrote about this approach in my newsletter, a few people unsubscribed, leaving me messages that I am “part of the problem” if I don’t consider all Trump supporters to be “racist deplorables.”
Lisa Joy Nolan. Making portraits of friends lets me get loose and play with new ideas without the fear of failure that comes with every assignment. Lisa and I have a mutual fondness for high drama and neo-noir aesthetics (she wrote and directed Westworld), so the shoot was a dance where I didn’t need to hold back, and Lisa knew exactly what I wanted.
Heman Bekele, for TIME. I was intimidated to do this shoot. TIME wanted an “upbeat, bright” portrait, and those are not the adjectives I dabble in. There is always a struggle to do the kind of portrait I envision while having it fit the desires of the publication. When it’s a cover, the balance is much trickier. I toned down my lighting, making it softer and cleaner, but I needed drama to make the image my own, so I added in green side light and bubbles.
Fashion Show for Prabal Gurung. This was my first time shooting a fashion show focusing on aesthetics vs. the documentary aspect of the scene. My soundtrack was the lush, textured sound of the Cocteau Twins.
Meredith Whittaker, the president of Signal, for Wired. Meredith and I bonded over our love of David Lynch and Twin Peaks. I was going for atmospheric portraits with an echo of the Black Lodge, and she knew exactly how to play with the idea.
Phish for GQ. Phish fans turned out to be a fun, friendly crowd. Not a single person turned away from my camera or gave me an angry look as I flashed them during the show. Everyone was smiling, happy, and mostly, very high.
Allentown, Pennsylvania. Allentown gave eerie vibes of a ghost town with no people in sight on a sunny Saturday afternoon. This woman seemed to appear out of nowhere and vanished by the time I looked down at my viewfinder and raised the camera again.
Eclipse watchers in Domino Park, Brooklyn. It’s been a year of the vertical format for me, contrasting with the last 20 years of horizontal framing.
Varsity Cheer for the New York Times Magazine. This cover story has taken six months to shoot with an exceedingly difficult access. Every cheerleading gym associated with Varsity kept shutting us down until Valley Elite All Star, a non-Varsity cheer company agreed to let me document their practice. It was one of the hardest shoots I’ve ever done. The practice was complete pandemonium. Girls were jumping, somersaulting and doing flips, and I was just trying to get out of the way and not get kicked in the head.
Halloween Dog Parade. A wonderful annual event in which people have silly fun and I got to take silly photos.
Fashion Week for Andrew Kwon. Soundtrack, Kate Bush, Wuthering Heights.
Jack Teich for the New York Times Magazine. Jack Teich was kidnapped at gunpoint from his own driveway in 1974, held for a week, and returned for a 750 thousand dollar ransom. For the cover shot, I took a close-up portrait of Jack, keeping in mind that I wasn’t just photographing an individual but making a psychological portrait about coping with life-long trauma.
Annie Howell for the Republic. Annie was sentenced for participating in the January 6 riot on the US Capitol. She spent time in jail and went through a personal rehabilitation, becoming a vocal Trump critic and deeply regretting her role in the riot. I photographed Annie on her porch in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Ina Garten for the New Yorker. The energy Ina brought to the shoot was infectious, and while I usually don’t like when my subjects smile, much less laugh, this felt right. I wanted to match her energy to the environment so we went to her garden, where the heat and humidity were so intense that the lens kept fogging up, and I had to shoot fast. This ended up my favorite portrait of the shoot, giving Alice in Wonderland vibes.
Maggie Rogers & Ron Carter for New York Magazine. The shoot was part of a portfolio for the Fall Preview edition of New York Magazine of eight performing artists rehearsing for their soon-to-be opening shows. I’ve been trying to make motion blurs happen, and for this project I used a lot of them to transform the space and add a touch of whimsy and energy.
Mall Arcades for Bloomberg Businessweek. What happens when you listen to the Cure’s Disintegration before setting out to what was supposed to be a fun and bubbly shoot about Japanese arcades coming to American malls.
Trash collectors for the New Yorker. I followed a garbage truck until 3am as it was making its rounds on the Lower East Side, and this was the last shot taken. I knew that it won’t get any better than Jesus Saves neon sign and called it a night.
Jessie & Joel wedding for Vogue. Jessie is my sister-in-law, so when she asked me to shoot her wedding I came out of my retirement from wedding photography. We both wanted to stay away from the popular natural light and bokeh aesthetic of modern wedding photography, so I photographed the day using with my usual strobe and style. Jessie also happens to be the Executive Director of Vogue.com and wrote a story about her day in the magazine.
Living with Alzheimer's gene for New York Magazine. I made these portraits remotely since the subjects were spread out across the US. I also wanted to emphasize the emotional aspect of the story, and with remote photography, the subjects can look directly into the phone without the photographer being physically present and poking a big camera in their face, helping to disconnect and allow for intimate portraits.
Election results in NYC for Die Zeit. I photographed till 2am in what was an intense, emotional night.
Biographies in Light Campaign for Apparatus — Matthew Placek, Tara Caroll, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Jacob Larsen. I wanted the images to be dynamic and whimsical, envisioning the final series as a mosaic of light and color, and I wanted to create all effects in camera. It was the first time I was able to bring my ideas to life on a grand scale, with 18 subjects photographed for the campaign.
Magician, Derrick Chung. The portrait that kicked off all the experimentation for the year. I used Pepper’s Ghost principle in magic to make this happen.
See you in 2025.
Happy New Year!
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HI Dina, I'm fascinated by this description of the Jack Teich picture 'keeping in mind that I wasn’t just photographing an individual but making a psychological portrait about coping with life-long trauma.'. I'd love to know how you directed him in this situation? How did you get him into the mood which then portrayed his trauma? Did you chat to him about the event and capture his natural expression? Or did you tell him what you were hoping to achieve visually? Would love to know how you approach something like this (love your work :)
Fascinating, love many of them, so much so that I had to renew my lapsed subscription. The Meredith Whittaker portraits are probably my favourites, but great food for thought in the others, in particular about what to keep and what to discard. If I’d taken that Ina photograph, for example, I’d probably have discarded it as too messy…. but it’s great! Thanks for sharing these, and the commentary, happy new year.