Junior (April 2011)
Junior, Downtown
Downtown Greensboro has the right mix of textures if you know where to look. Old stone walls, iron fire escapes, riveted steel bridges, the kind of industrial bones that a city accumulates over a century and mostly stops noticing. Junior saw something in those locations before I did, which is part of why the shoot worked.
He came to me wanting to build his modeling portfolio, and said yes to every location I suggested. We moved from indoors to out, from a window-lit room with warm afternoon light to the underside of a railroad bridge where he hung from the crossbeams in fingerless gloves and looked directly into the lens. Against a stone wall with old graffiti behind him. On a fire escape in a blue striped shirt, looking back over his shoulder like he had been doing this for years.
It was the first time I had deliberately scouted specific interior and urban locations for a shoot rather than letting the environment happen around me. Junior made it easy. He had the instinct for it already.
