Dru Donovan: Untitled, 2009

“I made this portrait a few days after Christmas, while back home visiting a childhood friend and her twin boys. It was too cold to go outside, so I made photographs to distract them from their restlessness.”—Dru Donovan

Dru Donovan bases her work mainly on performance. She asks her subjects to express themselves through their bodies. Their poses, which are sometimes surprising, are intended to illustrate their emotional states of desires. Donovan encourages a certain freedom, letting her models move in front of her lens without intervention. By focusing on the physical presence—the body—of her models, Donovan manages to refresh the genre of portraiture, even when using a conventional technique.

Donovan’s Untitled, 2009, was featured in reGeneration 2: Tomorrow’s Photographers Today, the second book in Aperture’s series shining a spotlight on the next generation’s rising stars.

Each limited-edition print is hand-packed with great care and ships from New York within 3–5 days.