The Things We Make Together
Updated: Oct 7
Mosh | September, 2024
It started with a racket.
My friend Allison has an impressive commitment to the art of thrifting. If there is a Goodwill within driving distance, chances are she has already been there today...and may very well be going back.
On one of these pilgrimages, she found a handful of old tennis rackets.
Al sold vintage clothing at the time, and I had been wanting to invite her into a shoot as a stylist. This was new territory for both of us. I had always styled my own photographs, and although Al had an incredible eye for vintage, she had never styled a photo shoot before.
Then she mentioned that she wanted to weave colorful yarn through one of the rackets.
That was enough.
I knew exactly where we were going.
There was an abandoned tennis court I knew, faded and overgrown, with remnants of blue and green still showing through the weeds. It was beautiful in the particular way neglected places sometimes are. I'd photographed there once before and had always loved what those faded colors did against red hair.
Which brings me to our model.
I met Olivia at the grocery store.
This is apparently a legitimate casting method for me, because she wasn't even the first model I'd discovered while buying groceries.
For months, Liv had been my grocery-store cashier buddy. I'd find myself hoping she was working whenever I ran in for eggs or beer. She had this beautiful strawberry-blonde hair and a face I desperately wanted in front of my camera. Eventually I worked up the nerve to tell her so.
She had never modeled before.
Perfect.
The Clothes
Al's personal aesthetic and mine are decidedly not the same.
She has a love for 90s menswear, vintage sportswear and the sort of clothing that suggests Kevin McCallister may be a legitimate fashion reference. And she pulls it off like nobody's business!
I tend to... go in another direction.
Which was precisely why I wanted her to do it.
Al pulled the wardrobe and I supplemented it with pieces from my own collection—shoes, hats, jewelry and bright flashes of color. Instead of trying to make one person's aesthetic win, we let the two meet somewhere in the middle.
Even the tennis racket became part of the wardrobe. Al sat down and wove brightly colored yarn through its strings by hand, turning the thrift-store find that had inspired the whole thing into a prop made specifically for the shoot.
There was, however, one small creative difference still to come.
The makeup.
Al initially envisioned something very natural. Almost nude.
Shushu and I had other ideas.
Shushu is my bestie, an aesthetician, and one
of my favorite people to create with. We share
enough of the same visual brain that very little needs to be explained between us. She sees where something is going and moves with it. I don't have to direct every detail. She simply gets to work.
And that morning, she got to work in the back of my Jeep.
In the rain.
The Glamorous Life of a Photo Shoot
By the day of the shoot, the weather had decided not to cooperate.
Liv sat in the open back of my Jeep while Shushu did her makeup. I threw a rain poncho over Shu to keep her and her work dry while I performed what I can only describe as a highly technical rain-stopping dance in the parking lot.
Apparently, it worked.
As soon as Shushu finished the makeup, the rain stopped.
The clouds opened.
The sun came out.
The photo shoot gods had accepted my offering.
We didn't waste the opportunity.
We headed for the court and Liv, who had almost no experience in front of a camera, immediately started moving as though somebody had neglected to tell her that.
She was good.
Really good.
There is always a moment when I'm photographing someone new when I see it click—when they stop wondering what they're supposed to do and start communicating with the camera instead.
Liv got there almost immediately.
Al held my reflector. Shushu darted in to fix hair and makeup. I shot. We laughed. We changed things. We tried things.
And when Liv needed to change outfits, my Jeep once again became our production studio. I opened the doors and clamped a large sheet between them to construct a makeshift changing room.
I deeply regret that no photographic evidence of this engineering marvel survives.
Somewhere in all of this, Shushu and I had one of our practically psychic creative conversations:
The makeup needed more.
For the second look, the lips became deeper. The colors became stronger. Liv stood against the chain-link fence in greens and plaid, her strawberry hair falling around her shoulders.
I looked through the camera.
There it was.
That was the shoot.
By the end of the day, Al was sold too.
The woman who had requested nearly nude makeup looked at what Shushu had done and admitted that the makeup made it. She told us she'd never ask for plain makeup again.
We'll call that character development.
Trespassing, Allegedly
There was one other slight complication.
The tennis court was abandoned, but it wasn't exactly ours.
At some point, the property owner noticed four women running around his neglected tennis court with vintage clothing, photography equipment and a yarn-covered racket.
He called me over.
Al was reasonably certain we were all going to jail.
I walked over, explained what we were doing, and waited.
He said it was fine.
So much for our life of crime.
And we went right back to shooting.
What I remember most about that day isn't any single photograph, though.
It's how easy it felt.
Al seeing her styling come alive for the first time. Liv discovering that she could model. Shushu doing what she does so effortlessly. Me behind the camera watching three very different creative instincts somehow become one thing.
It was playful. Improvised. Collaborative.
And I was happy.
Two Years Later
I didn't know then how long it would be before I did something like that again.
At the time, I was already packing my belongings and preparing to leave my home without knowing exactly what came next. There was a great deal happening around me, but I felt an urgency to make this shoot anyway.
Looking back, I'm glad I listened to it.
Photography went quiet for me afterward.
I eventually began making still lifes again. I picked up the camera here and there. But that September afternoon was the last photo shoot I conceived, assembled and brought to life collaboratively in the way I had for so many years.
And somehow, in everything that followed, I never really shared it.
These photographs have been sitting with me ever since.
When I look at them now, they don't make me sad.
They remind me what can happen when people make something together.
Art can be deeply solitary. So much of making anything happens alone—in our heads, in our studios, behind computers, moving pieces around until something finally feels right.
But some things only exist because another person brought something you never would have thought of.
I wouldn't have woven yarn through that tennis racket.
Al wouldn't have chosen that makeup.
Liv didn't know she was a model.
Shushu didn't need me to tell her what to do.
And none of us, individually, would have made these photographs.
We made them together.
I think life is much the same way.
You can make all the art in the world, but at some point, you have to let someone else into it. You have to share it.
So before I rush toward the next shoot, the next idea, the next version of myself as a photographer, there was something I needed to finish first.
This one.
I'm learning not to race immediately toward whatever comes next. I'm learning to stay with the big things. To let them take time. To see them through.
And sharing the work, I've realized, is part of finishing the work.
So, two years later, here it is.
Al's thrifted tennis rackets.
Shushu's definitely-not-nude makeup.
Liv, my grocery-store cashier turned first-time model.
My Jeep: makeup station, wardrobe trailer and architectural marvel.
An abandoned tennis court.
Four women making something simply because we wanted to see what might happen.
This story and these photographs deserved to be shared before I went forward.
Now I think I'm ready to see what comes next.
Credits
Photography & Creative Direction — MOSH
Wardrobe Styling — Allison Orland / fourwildflowers
Hair & Makeup — Shushu Le / shushule_artistry
Model — Olivia Aukema / olivia_aukema
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