For her new series, “Boulevard,” Katy Grannan took to the unforgiving, sun-bleached sidewalks of the Tenderloin District, in San Francisco, and of Hollywood Boulevard, in L.A., to photograph inhabitants and passersby. The resulting portraits, a selection of which is presented below, are part of Grannan’s “Happy Ever After,” exhibition, which also includes a three-channel video installation called “Believers.”
She says of her photographs, "I’ve always been interested in the way that photographs relate to storytelling, especially the economy of a short story and the way in which a universe, or a fragmented universe, is encapsulated within very limited parameters. My photographs are vignettes, but they’re not just about the specific person in the picture—the narrative includes the unseen exchange between artist and subject who are often strangers meeting for the first time, each taking a leap of faith by trusting an unfamiliar person and an unexpected encounter. In the past, I photographed people in their homes or in deserted outdoor spaces (usually they’d answered ads I placed in local newspapers), but in Los Angeles and San Francisco, we met on the street and made the photographs streetside, in public."
