Katy Grannan was born in Arlington, Massachusetts. She received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and her MFA from Yale University. For her early works, she placed advertisements for models in a Poughkeepsie, New York, newspaper and then photographed the subjects in their own homes or locations of their choosing. They collaborated with Grannan on how they would be photographed, which often was in the nude. In Grannan’s series , her subjects were strangers in Los Angeles and San Francisco that she approached and then shot outdoors in the strong midday light, thereby blurring the line between portraiture and street photography. She also has made video installations such as and .
In images for the New York Times Magazine, Katy Grannan focuses on such poignant details as the teenager’s imperfect complexion, the sick man’s drooping muscles, a tidy kitchen counter, or a neighbourhood swing to make us understand heartrending realities of juvenile imprisonment, end-of-life decisions, or post-traumatic stress syndrome. For several of her art gallery projects, Grannan advertised for subjects in small-town newspapers. As she gained the sitters’ trust and helped visualise their fantasies, many posed nude or partially undressed. In Grannan’s work for the Times, we recognise similar qualities of risk, vulnerability, and, ultimately, empathy between the photographer and her subjects.



















