COVER STORY: PORTRAITS OF AN ARTIST

Thea Traff ʼ09 has earned acclaim for her photographic portraits of celebrities, from actors Claire Danes and Ewan McGregor to President Joe Biden and the Rolling Stones. Artistically, however, she’s less focused on fame than she is on feelings.

PORTRAITS OF AN ARTIST

By Joel Hoekstra

Illustrated by Owen Davey—Folio Art

Thea Traff arranges the studio like she always does. Two support beams are wrestled into place, a plain paper backdrop unfurled. On either side are foam boards—one white, one black. Atop a light stand, Traff mounts a crate-sized Fresnel spotlight whose lens gives her portraits a signature style akin to Old Hollywood.

A fellow photographer has rented Traff the use of his shared studio space in Bushwick, a gritty-but-gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn. Today, she’s shooting an actress in need of publicity images. But the actress and her stylist are running late.

Traff checks her iPhone. There are Instagram notifications, some texts and an email from the New York Times with an assignment offer: Is she free on Thursday to shoot the Rolling Stones concert in New Jersey?

Scroll through Traff’s Instagram account and you’ll see dozens of the black-andwhite portraits she has taken for the New Yorker, Time, the New York Times and other well-known publications. Her recent shoots include Tony and Oscar winning actors and Pulitzer Prize winning authors. But Traff seems both unfazed by her proximity to celebrities and unaware of her own rising fame.

“Recently, I said to Thea, ‘Isn’t it amazing to think you’re one of the top editorial photographers in the country?’” Coralie Kraft, a photo editor at the New York Times Magazine, recalls. “She acted like I was crazy. I don’t think she realizes how successful she is.”

The actress and stylist have arrived. Traff asks the subject, dressed in an oversized black suit, to move a bit, and the actress readily twirls as the photographer fusses with the Fresnel and snaps several test images. From experience, she knows these “test” images, taken with her Canon EOS R-5 when the subject isn’t posing, can yield the most authentic emotions and expressions.

Satisfied with the setup, Traff fully engages. The lens bobs and weaves as the actress pouts and preens. Traff grabs an old office chair from a corner and rolls around her subject, shutter firing. Removing a clasp from her hair, she’s loosening up—and quietly signaling her subject to do the same. Stripping off her boots, she drops to the floor to get a fresh angle. “One of the problems with being 6 feet tall means I’m never at eye level with my subjects,” she says.

Half an hour into the shoot, Traff sets down the camera and reaches for her MacBook. She clicks a file with dozens of images pulled from the internet: kids making faces, women striking poses, men glancing over their shoulders. “What do you think about trying something like this?” she says to the actress, pointing to an image or two.

PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES

Traff grew up in Wayzata and got her first camera in elementary school. Encouraged by her shutterbug father, she found she liked photography. In middle school, a snapshot of a swing in the Traffs’ backyard won her a prize in a local photography competition. At 16, she attended a summer photography program at Parsons School of Design in New York. “I was so introverted and shy,” she recalls. “It felt like photography was where I could develop a voice, an outlet to express myself.”

At Colgate University, she double majored in philosophy and studio art, completing a senior project focused on landscapes. “I was too intimidated to approach people,” she recalls. When humans did appear in her photography, they were often faceless or disembodied: backs of heads, outstretched hands, crossed legs.

During her senior year, Traff landed a monthlong internship at the New Yorker, shadowing the magazine’s photo editors. “I didn’t even know what a photo editor was,” she says. “By the end, though, I was convinced it was the best job in the entire world: getting to read early drafts of the magazine, doing research and searching out the best available photographs related to a subject.” With graduation looming, she emailed her contacts at the magazine incessantly, asking if there were any openings in the photo editing department. “Suddenly, there was a job,” she recalls. “Whether it was a position that came open or was created because I kept asking them—I don’t know.”

CAREER DEVELOPMENT

She spent just over five years at the magazine, first on the digital side and then on the print publication. The job involved sifting through wire photography sites to find an arresting image to go with an online post or coordinating and directing shoots with photographers and subjects on locations around the world. The New Yorker also provided access to the archives of Richard Avedon, and Traff found herself marveling at his portraits—often black and whites against blank backdrops. “It felt like the most incredible education in photography,” she says. Seeing her selections published alongside New Yorker articles was exhilarating. “It could have been any other photo, but I was the one who chose it and put it out in the world,” she says. “It made me feel so powerful.”

I WAS SO INTROVERTED AND SHY. IT FELT LIKE PHOTOGRAPHY WAS WHERE I COULD DEVELOP A VOICE, AN OUTLET TO EXPRESS MYSELF.

In 2018, Traff moved to Time, commissioning portraits and often directing cover shoots. But her passion for editing was starting to ebb. “I would get work back from a photographer and sometimes feel like it could have been so much better,” she says. She felt like the images didn’t capture much emotion and that the photographers relied too heavily on the available light, which was often overly bright or weak or came from the wrong direction. “It was a bit presumptuous—I knew nothing about strobes or cameras—but I began to wonder if I could do the work myself,” she says.

Thea Traff '09

In the world of photography, switching from editing to shooting is rare. (She likens it to a coach deciding instead to play for the team.) But the more she considered being behind the lens, the more it intrigued her. “It would’ve made a lot more sense to transition slowly,” she says. “But I thought, ‘If I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do it 100 percent.’” She moved to Los Angeles and gave notice at Time. Traff’s move to LA coincided with the pandemic, and the city felt weirdly solitary. Craving human interaction and pushing herself to develop skills, she logged onto a casting auditions website and offered to do free headshots. “I wanted to work with actors because I wanted people who were expressive,” she says. Hundreds of people responded. Traff set up a backdrop in her backyard and started snapping. “It was the widest range of characters you can imagine,” she recalls. For inspiration, she pulled favorite images she’d come across in her years as an editor and tacked them to the walls of her apartment. Sometimes she showed the images to actors and asked them to take inspiration from the poses.

IT WAS A BIT PRESUMPTUOUS—I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT STROBES OR CAMERAS—BUT I BEGAN TO WONDER IF I COULD DO THE WORK MYSELF.

“Some photographers fear if they use reference, their work will be deemed as copying,” Traff says. “But photo editors use reference images all the time as a way to communicate what they want. I’ve found using reference images gives the subject a sense of direction and puts them at ease. And what’s created is something entirely different from the initial reference.”

COMPOSED COMPOSITION

The pulse of a playlist and the Fresnel’s incessant flash have infused the Bushwick studio with a dance floor vibe. The actress has donned a black bra and trousers. She adds a pair of shimmering elbow-length gloves to the ensemble. At Traff’s request, she frames her face with her hands.

It’s all going well until the stylist introduces an apple into the scene—an allusion to the temptation of Eve. People eating apples is an overused trope in photography, and Traff instinctively knows this. Still, she keeps snapping away. “If I know it’s not working and I just stop shooting, it can kill the mood,” she later remarks. “People’s comfort levels drop.”

“Thea is exceptionally calm and levelheaded,” says Allie Monck, an associate photo editor at the New Yorker who has worked with Traff. “No matter who she’s photographing, whether the president or actors or singers or writers, she manages to capture their presence. People seem really grounded in her images.”

Such results are all the more remarkable given the constraints Traff often faces. Tapped at the last minute to shoot Joe Biden at the White House for an article in the New Yorker, she found herself with just 10 minutes of time and was prohibited from using a flash, even though the president was backlit by blinding sunshine streaming through the windows of the Oval Office. When she arrives at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium to shoot the Stones (she does accept the Times’ assignment), she discovers the photographers’ pit is well below the stage and all her peers have step stools.

Nonetheless, one of her shots of Mick Jagger strutting on stage is published alongside the Times’ review the next day. But Traff feels more satisfied with several other images published by the paper, depicting Stones’ fans tailgating before the concert. “It was really fun to go up to people, tell them what I was doing and who I was doing it for and take their portraits,” she says. “Just having an excuse to talk to strangers felt so good, so empowering.”

The Fresnel is taken off its light stand. The Canon is back in its case. Hugs given and thank yous swapped, the actress and the stylist have departed. Days later, Traff will sift through more than 1,600 shots and choose a handful to edit: one is the actress untangling a lock of hair, snapped at an unguarded moment; another is a black-gloved hand, splayed fingers straining skyward.

Clearly exhausted by the three-hour shoot, Traff flops into a chair. Her voice quivers a bit, hinting at the emotional toll the work can take on her.

“No matter what the shoot is, in the first 20 minutes I get really anxious that it’s not working. It feels like a lot of pressure,” she confesses. She’s cognizant of the minutes ticking by, keyed in to the slightest discomfort. “It’s hard for me to be in control of a subject’s time, dictating what they’re doing and how they’re moving. It’s a constant balance of wanting to make them comfortable and wanting to push them. I’m trying to push both of us out of our comfort zones—in order to make something interesting.”

Joel Hoekstra is a Twin Cities writer and editor.

SIDEBAR

SHARPER IMAGE

What makes Thea Traff’s photography so compelling? Three experts offer their views.

Thea’s Elevator Series was an "aha moment" for me. Of course! An elevator is a perfect definition of art: a pause between one place and another, a moment between one experience and the next, a slice of time between the past and the future. Most of us have been in an elevator. We get into this tiny box with total strangers, no one talks to anyone, and you try not to look at anything. These photos show the silence, the universal feeling of being alone and in community all at once. BILL COLBURN '88, Upper School visual arts

It might seem benign at first, just a photo of two hands. But Thea’s ability to take something or someone, who has been photographed a million times over, and make us feel like we’re seeing it for the first time, is one of the reasons she’s such a great photographer. These two hands, their position, grasping at the sky, and the lighting, almost directly overhead, accentuates every wrinkle and joint, making them look like an abstract sculpture.PETER FISHER, photographer

This portrait of Alexandra Daddario encapsulates all my favorite modes of Thea’s work. The pose is unexpected. The actor appears pensive and serious. But she also has a commanding presence—a signature element that Thea manages to infuse into every portrait. Her subjects hold their own, elevated by Thea’s impeccable lighting.ALLIE MONCK, associate photo editor, The New Yorker