Jessica Yatrofsky – Title unknown (2010)

If you’ve ever thought to yourself: Self, you know what? I really, really wish Ryan McGinley had a female twin who was a photographer, too; only I wish she limited her output to stuff in keeping with McGinley’s Yearbook project then Yatrofsky is exactly the image maker you’ve been waiting for. 

It sounds like I’m throwing shade–and, in fairness, I probably am a bit (really, I can’t think of an image maker who embraces such a limited scope of exploration)–but occasionally it pays off for her. The above for example is derivative as fuck but it also captures an open, honest, in-the-moment immediacy that so much made-for-Internet-aggrandizement sorely lacks. And, although her seeming lack of any familiarity with cinematic form is appalling, she is actually putting together interesting, boundary questioning video work. (Please, please for the love of all that is good, pure and holy–if you are shooting video and not celluloid, the resulting work is not ‘film’, it’s ‘video’ or ‘digital cinematography’.)