Bikini kill…
The woman Katy Grannan has photographed wears her beach babe persona like a suit of armour, albeit one that lays all the chinks bare.
Outside in…
It is one of many portraits Grannan has taken of the drifters and drug addicts in Modesto, one of the overlooked towns along Highway 99 in California’s Central Valley. Her subjects are the left-behind, those failed by a hollow American dream.
Double take…
Her photography tends to pummel its viewers from opposite directions. The fringe figures Grannan frames come across as out-and-proud survivors, yet with their personal tragedies uncomfortably on show.
So sexy it hurts…
Her photography captures the celebratory, exploitative force of music videos, fashion ads and other sexed-up images that attempt to dictate our aspirations.
New rules…
Here, the image unpicks 21st-century myths about sexuality and empowerment. There’s an uneasy mismatch between the archetypes her subject has embraced and her own unruly humanity.
