Lights, Camera, Fashion

I’m a curator of photographs, so I wear many different hats. I write acquisition proposals for donations and gifts. I conduct research for publications and upcoming exhibitions. I am involved in storage planning and collection housing, and I am in and out of the conservation labs.

My latest exhibition is Queer Lens: A History of Photography, on view through September 28, 2025. It is a survey of queer photography from the 19th century to the present day. I hope people walk into the galleries and are surprised that this is a Getty Museum exhibition.

A childhood back East

I grew up north of Boston in a town called Methuen. My mother is an artist. She knits, crochets, sews, does ceramics, and is an award-winning quilter. My father is a toolmaker, now retired. A toolmaker builds machines that make machines. He built the first machine that could automatically insert dual integrated chips into a circuit board.

Early interests

I had a stamp collection. I had a coin collection. I was in school plays. In high school, I had a role as a teacher in a play called Up the Down Staircase. I did an impression of a real teacher at the school. Even though it wasn’t a major part, it ran away with the show. People were saying, “Oh my God, you nailed it.” I did not think of the arts as a viable area of interest for me, because I am not a fine artist, and even though I do have creativity in that area, I do not excel at drawing. In high school, I thought I might want to be in international relations, because I was interested in different cultures and history.

Introduction to art

When I arrived at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, I took an art history survey course and loved it. I always liked history, so the arts felt like the ultimate way of experiencing history. I remember being drawn to Italian Mannerism and Baroque art at first, but then I gravitated toward photography. I had a mentor who was a specialist in French 19th-century painting but was seduced by photography. Whenever we talked about projects, she would get more excited when discussing photographs.

Mastering photography basics

For my BA in art, I was required to take three fine arts classes. I selected drawing, print-making, and photography. What happens in the darkroom when the latent image comes up through the developer is pure magic. I took portraits of friends. I’d put on nice music and give them a glass of wine. I would pretend to take a whole roll of film, but there was nothing in the camera. I just wanted them to get used to the click and slowly relax. And then when they were relaxed, I would say, “Okay, I’m going to change the film,” and I would put a roll in. I didn’t want to waste my film.

From Boston to Paris to Getty

After I completed my undergraduate degree, I took a job in the research library at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Two years later, I began my master’s degree in art history at Williams College. After graduate school, I did a four-month internship in Paris at the Société française de photographie, helping rehouse the collection of daguerreotypes. Toward the end of my stay in France, the Getty Museum’s then senior curator of photographs, Weston Naef, came to attend Paris Photo, and hired me.

How I approach an exhibition

I look for an artist or topic that has not been the focus of a major exhibition in many years and is deserving of one. I also study the strengths and weaknesses of the Getty Museum’s collection. An exhibition can be an excellent opportunity to propose new acquisitions.

What I love about fashion photography

Fashion photography is extremely competitive. The fashion photographer must work within the constraints set by the client, such as showing the clothes or working on a beach, and yet he or she must try to create something innovative.

Not every fashion photograph is a work of art, certainly, but the very best of them are. And those usually come from a photographer who has earned the right to do what they want; in other words, the magazine editors are not directing their every move.

Fashion also reflects the social and cultural currents of the time. At the end of World War II, Christian Dior rejected the masculine, military-inspired styles in favor of ultrafeminine designs characterized by soft shoulders, accentuated busts, wasp waists, and voluminous skirts. In Paris, a model wearing Dior’s “New Look” was attacked in the street by women outraged by the designer’s generous use of fabric, which had been strictly rationed throughout the war. Despite several early protests, the style was enormously successful; by 1949, Dior alone accounted for 5 percent of France’s national export revenue.

What makes a great fashion photograph

Well, there’s composition and lighting and the clothes and the model. All these things must work together to make a good picture. In the mid-1950s, Richard Avedon was shooting outdoors in Paris capturing Suzy Parker roller-skating or Carmen Dell’Orefice jumping a puddle. Adding movement into fashion photography was revolutionary, a trend started in the 1930s by Martin Munkácsi. Then from the ’50s to the ’60s, there was a big shift in clothing styles and types of models that were in demand. The 1950s models were called swans, and they had very fair skin and were tall, thin, and refined looking. They looked older than they were. They were untouchable. Then in the ’60s, it switched from the icy elegance of Dovima posing in the studio wearing an haute couture gown to Twiggy in a miniskirt running for the bus.

The state of fashion photography today

It has been transformed into something else, which has to do with the Internet and social media. Anyone with an eye can get attention for their work through those outlets. Before, the magazines controlled everything. And there was a hierarchy. If you were in Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, you were at the very top. If you worked for Elle, that was a little lower. But the Internet and social media broke that all open and totally changed it. Also, many photographers were retired because of the Me Too movement. Then all these young people could be hired for less money—a whole new generation of creatives moved forward. They are people who never considered themselves fashion photographers, but rather visual storytellers or image makers.

Favorite outfit I own

A suit that my partner, fashion designer Puey Quiñones, made for me that I wore to the opening event for my 2018 exhibition Icons of Style: A Century of Fashion Photography. It’s a riff on a Dior double-breasted suit in a blue chalk stripe. I sent Puey a picture of what I had in mind, and he had it made for me. That was a great moment for both of us.