|
 Sonya Yruel
“I’ve often wondered if my photographs could incite any unwanted litigious backlash,” says Sonya Yruel, a senior at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University. After reading our column on Fair Use (APOC, November ’06), Yruel felt reassured. “I’m confident my images fall into the category of parody,” she wrote us. Indeed, her send-up of painter Rene Magritte replaces the original work’s floating fruit with a shoe, as if its subject’s dapper dress were also defying gravity. Yruel shot the shoe and model separately but with the same umbrella-softened strobe setup; she then used Photoshop to resize and composite the shoe. The photographer’s icon-busting whimsy is no surprise when you consider that her influences include David LaChapelle and Duane Michals. Her favorite photograph: Philippe Halsman’s Dali Atomicus, in which the surrealist’s studio furniture, paintings, and several cats fly through the air. Visit sonyafoto.com.
—Russell Hart
 Racheal Ortiz
This view of downtown San Francisco was shot by Racheal Ortiz during a portrait session with a friend and her newborn baby. “We were at an apartment in North Beach,” recalls Ortiz, who was using a 35mm Canon EOS Elan 7. “As I waited for my friend to dress her baby, I noticed how great the buildings looked when framed by the window, so I clicked off a few shots.” An art major at San Francisco State University, Ortiz works part-time for a wedding and commercial photo studio, but hopes to shoot for fashion and music magazines. “I’m not all that fond of classic portraiture,” she says, “but I really like fashion, products—and live shows!”
—Jack Crager
|
