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'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. 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.

Archival Pigment Print
Paper Size: 17 1/16 x 22 inches
Image Size: 16 1/2 x 20 5/8 inches
Edition of 25 and 4 Artist’s Proofs
Signed and numbered by the artist

Dru Donovan (b. 1981, St. Paul, Minnesota) graduated with an MFA in Photography from Yale University of Art in 2009. She has participated in group shows in the U.S., and her work is held in the collection of the Musée d’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland. She has also been selected as a participant at the California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art.