iPhone Photography on the Cover of Time Magazine
Most of us post our iPhone photos on Instagram and are
content if an image gets a few dozen likes. But Luisa Dörr’s
iPhone portraits got her a gig at
Time
magazine: her pho-
tographs were used on the magazine’s cover — 12 covers to
be precise.
Time
’s director of photography and visual enterprise,
Kira Pollack, was beginning to formulate a multimedia
strategy for an upcoming story on women who had broken
the glass ceiling in their fields. By chance, she was scrolling
through her Instagram feed when she came across the
account of a young Brazilian photographer who took soul-
ful portraits of girls and women. Pollack had never heard of
Dörr, but that didn’t matter.
“I was instantly lured down the magical scroll of
@luisadorr’s feed,” Pollack wrote in a blog post for Time’s
website. “There were countless images of women of all
ages against ethereal yet raw landscapes. Natural light,
lovely tone, each one a studied composition. In her bio
line she had written, ‘All photos made with the iPhone.’ I
tracked her down immediately.”
In September 2017, Luisa arrived in New York City,
her first trip to the United States. She arrived with a small
suitcase and her iPhone. Soon, she was flying to portrait
sessions across the country.
The cover story, “Firsts,” featured Dörr’s photo-
graphs of pioneering women in diverse fields. Her subjects
included Hillary Clinton, Serena Williams, Janet Yellen,
and Aretha Franklin.
Many of her subjects, used to photo sessions
that involve lights, stylists, lighting assistants, and large
cameras, were disarmed by Dörr’s equipment: an iPhone
and a reflector for directing sunlight onto faces. Some
gave her just a few minutes to work, but Pollack said
Dörr was able to quickly gain the trust of her subjects
and work creatively with them. In all, Dörr photographed
40 women, and
Time
published the story in an edition
with 12 different covers.
“Some were surprised to see
Time
magazine making
a project with a smartphone,” Dörr said. “Others didn’t care.
[For] the ones with doubts, there was always someone from
the project next to me ready to explain the peculiarities
of the project … and justify the use of the smartphone.
“Most difficult subject: Aretha Franklin. Plenty of
rules, but it was worth it. She ended up singing for us.”
Dörr is grateful that Pollack would take a chance
on an unknown and “risk so much for the sake of risking.”
Pollack’s confidence in her gave her the confidence to
work for a magazine and subjects with global significance.
“It has been a great pump for my career,” she said.
“Also, on a personal level, [it was] a great experience. The
USA market knows I exist, and I’m getting emails from
time to time with interesting offers, mainly portraits.”
Based in the small village of Bahia in Brazil, Dörr
lives as do most freelance photographers: experiencing
dry spells in assignments, waiting for checks to arrive,
and shooting what she can to “collect some extra cash.”
Dörr grew up wanting to be a designer, but a pho-
tographer in her family brought her along on shoots and
into the studio and darkroom, where she began to play
around with the tools of the trade. She went on to study
photography at a Lutheran university in Brazil and soon
began shooting weddings and other celebrations.
Dörr bought her first iPhone in 2012, and it quickly
became the camera she picked up the most. “Gear [can]
keep you away from the moment,” she said. “In my field,
portrait photography is more about not being aggressive
or intimidating with the tools. With a smartphone, I look
quite harmless to the model. That helps to get a more
relaxed atmosphere.”
iPhone Photography on the Cover of Time Magazine
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.