Alongside an established profile in the world of fashion and magazine photography, Collier Schorr also has been working in portrait photography since the late 1980s, particularly of adolescents. She has documented portraits of teenagers across the United States, mostly of white youth, as well as social and cultural figures, performers, wrestlers, and soldiers. Her work addresses the desires and conflicts that attend an adolescent’s dawning sexuality and the construction of gender. The subjects in her photographs typically display the longing, intimacy, and alienation that accompany the formation of identity, and her titles frequently point to these issues of gender fluidity. In all her portraits, Schorr offers minimal settings and staging, focusing instead on her sitter with sharp contrasts, vivid colors and shadows, and personal encounters through the camera.

2012.17