Having forgone traditional fashion photography, Danielle Levitt found her most provocative photographs came from shooting average people. These photos accelerated her into the commercial photography world, and Levitt’s oddball viewpoint has expanded from portraits of the bizarre twin/non-twin collective Andrew-Andrew to more commercial work for Interview and The New York Times Magazine, among others.
In November her portrait series, We are Experienced, depicting American Youth in their multitudes of identities, will be released in book form from Miss Rosen Editions/PowerHouse books. Taking cues from commercial culture, her images position young people in now cliché settings: at parties, staring into space on their beds and posing menacingly at a kitchen table are just a couple of the situations brought into sharp focus. Titling her book We Are Experienced makes total sense, her subjects casually lounge on couches at house parties, comfortable in their Americanness and the magnitude of its diversity.