Katy Grannan

Education

Grannan earned her humanities BA from The University of Pennsylvania and her MFA in Photography from the Yale University School of Art.

Career

Grannan's work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, and is in public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2012, Grannan's work was featured in the exhibition The Sun and Other Stars: Katy Grannan and Charlie White at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She has also recently taken a portrait of Mr. President Barack Obama for the New York Times.

Her preference to photograph strangers began while she was still at Yale School of Art, when she placed newspaper adverts asking for "people for portraits". This work culminated in the monograph "The Model American."

For her series Boulevard, she was influenced by her new surroundings in California. Grannan would photograph strangers in Los Angeles and San Francisco against stark white walls as a backdrop. Each photograph is the result of an on-the-spot collaboration, made with the willing participation of her subjects, who she compensates for their time. She befriended several of the subjects and made a video piece called "The Believers" with them

She is influenced by the work of photographers such as Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin. A review of her 2009 London exhibition, The Westerns, described her work as "never less than intriguing" with "an otherworldliness here that sets her apart from her influences."

Film

Shot over three years on South Ninth Street or "The Nine", the film is a feature-length portrait of a small community of outliers living on a blighted street in a marginalized part of California.

Personal

Grannan grew up in Arlington, Massachusetts.And has three children

Books