The City: Anna Wolf
“It is quite impossible to unite happiness with a yearning for what we don’t have. Happiness has all that it wants, and resembling the well-fed, there shouldn’t be hunger or thirst.”
Foreword
Photographer. Creative director. East Coast + West Coast hybrid. On location, touring around the nation. California girl at heart.
Preface
I grew up in the idyllic city of Santa Monica: piling three girls on a skateboard to cruise around the neighborhood, sneaking out in the middle of the night to burn pine cones in the street or to watch scary movies at boys’ houses, and, in my later years, sneaking out with friends for raves in the desert. I started taking pictures in high school, focusing on setting up little portraits, stories and vignettes of my friends and family, and creating a world that was part reality, part fiction, which was ultimately fashion & lifestyle, even though the term was non-existent back in the day. After high school, I moved to San Francisco to attend a liberal arts college, not knowing if I would continue photography in a serious way. At the time, I had no idea that people made a living from it. It was the late 90s, and the commercial world hadn’t exploded yet. One day in the photo lab of my state university, I heard a couple of kids talking about this thing called art school, which blew my mind as I had no idea such a thing existed, so I promptly transferred to the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, where I learned a lot about self-promotion, usage rates, how to draw storyboards for a client, and other things that were really practical for real world applications. Everyone at the ArtCenter talked about moving to New York.
After my graduation, I lived to Mexico City for a year, then moved to NYC to start my career, having no idea what I was getting myself into. After learning enough Spanish to get my foot into the door in Mexico City, I started doing meetings and landed some editorial and advertising shoots, so I assumed that scoring meetings and doing shoots in New York would be a breeze. New York was a beast. It was cut throat and cold – from trying to order a breakfast sandwich at a bodega to watching someone flip through my portfolio like it was a phone book. I didn’t have a lot of friends here, and didn’t have any money, so I waited tables, did random side jobs, and picked up assisting work when I could, while cold emailing magazines and taking any meeting I could get. It was a slow, painful and demoralizing process, but I was undeterred. Every time I got knocked down, I would just wake up the next day and do it all over again. It was all blood, sweat, and tears for three years. By year five it started getting better, and then I finally hit my stride by year seven.
After a few years in New York, I landed an Urban Outfitters catalog: a friend of mine from college was freelance art directing, and since their regular photographer had a show in Europe, they were looking to replace her. They tried me out on a one-day shoot and then brought me on for the rest. After shooting for 11 days in Philly, Oregon and Seattle, I made more money than I normally made in months. Of course, I didn’t tell anyone that I was still assisting during that time, and right after the shoot I had an assisting job booked with a photographer in Paris for a Travel & Leisure story. On shoots, casual small talk is always about the gigs you have coming up and the projects are you working on, and you always need to have an answer ready for that, so I told my URBN clients that I was going to Paris for vacation and inspiration. Looking back, I realize how hard it was to start out having so little life and work experience, yet being forced to present yourself in a way that instills confidence in people. I don’t miss those days.
When I got back from Paris, I quit my waitressing job, spent almost all of my money on doing a promo run with my new URBN work, and then really pounded the pavement with meetings, doing as much name-dropping as I could, which allowed me to score a consistent gig with Domino Magazine and keep myself afloat as a photographer for the next few years. Being a photographer in New York, one of my biggest challenges was learning to not wear my heart on my sleeve. Coming from LA, it was my nature to want to share my emotions and fears on set, but I quickly realized that being that open worked to my disadvantage, so I had to learn the hard way to zip up my frustrations and pretend like I had all under control. As you get more experience, you find there’s no need to fake it anymore. Today, I want my shoots to be positive, collaborative, and fun. I’m fortunate to work with an incredible group of talented, hard-working and vibrant people, and that energy makes its way into my images.
In 2014, I started Tidal Magazine out of frustration of pitching and shooting on spec as I was tired of trying to get a strong crew together for a shoot that may or may not get run, so I decided to create a space that would enable me to shoot whatever and whenever I wanted. It’s an incredible amount of work putting Tidal out twice a year, but I’ve never looked back. Not only have I been able to bring on the most incredible humans to be a part of the Tidal team, but I’ve gotten to know so many other great photographers and creatives in the industry that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. Shooting and running a business is no joke, so being creative can often fall to the sidelines when you’re doing a ton of commercial work, but knowing that we had a new issue coming up would force me to pull together a personal shoot, and I love Tidal for that. Since the pandemic hit, we hit pause on the mag, but we’re gearing up for a spring 2022 issue, and me and the team could not be more pumped.
Epilogue
Photography is like one long therapy session, making you face your demons, while continuously doing things that are out of your comfort zone, which is ultimately the only way to grow and evolve. If it’s too easy, there’s no growth. I’ve learned so much about what I want for my career by learning what I don’t want, and my priorities have definitely changed over the years. What I thought I wanted for my career when I started out is so different then what I want now. When I was younger, it was all about being cool and working on cool projects. Today, I want nice clients, good budgets, and jobs that fit my aesthetic and vibe. And I want vacation. I’m all about hard work, but I don’t want it to consume my life anymore.
At the moment, I’m really focused on building on the lifestyle and beauty sides of my work. As I’m directing TV commercials more, bringing in aspects like music, movement, sound, and dialogue, I can really see that becoming a big part of my career path. While there’s a lot of overlap, it’s a whole other world that works parts of my brain that I don’t get to flex on the photo side, where I’m telling a literal, linear story.
When the pandemic hit and brought in so much uncertainty around the future of our industry, I didn’t panic as I was emotionally prepared for this. Being a commercial artist is a constant roller coaster, I’ve had a tremendous amount of ups and downs, so I knew I just had to buckle down and get ready for whatever was about to come my way. On the bright side, this whole thing really kicked me off of the hamster wheel I had been on for 18 years, allowing me to take a step back and think about the work I’ve done and where I want to go for this next chapter both in my career and my life, and I feel extremely fortunate to have the freedom and privilege to spend time thinking about those things.
Bibliography
Stoicism
The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday
Podcasts (The Ezra Klein Show , On The Media, Pod Save America)
The City
Favorite thing about living in New York ↝ The people
One thing you can't survive without in the city ↝ Pizza
Three adjectives describing New York ↝ Energetic, creative, ambitious
The most inspiring spot in the city ↝ My front stoop
Current obsession ↝ Looking at real estate in Spain
