BIO
Bootsy Holler is an intuitive American artist who has been working in photography for 27 years. She is best known for her work as a portraitist, beginning with intimate depictions of herself and her friends at the center of Seattle’s pivotal music scene during the early 1990s. These formative years working both ends of the lens cemented her style and methodology. Her personal journalistic approach informed her work as she segued into a thriving commercial and editorial practice while at the same time always creating art. Her art revolves around family, memory, emotions, eco-feminism, and giving feeling to the inanimate.
Holler currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She has been recognized by the Society of Photographic Journalism. Been selected for Critical Mass Top 50. Her art images have appeared in numerous publications like VOGUE, House & Garden, NPR, PDN, Lucky Lenscratch, Fraction, and Chinese Photographer Magazine. Her seminal work is in the permanent collection of the Grammy Museum. Recently she showed work at The Foley Gallery, NYC, and in 2020 she was invited to exhibit at the Shanghai International Photo Festival. She has hung art at Fotofever, Paris, The Griffin Museum of Photography, California Museum of Photography, and The Center for Fine Art Photography. She was awarded Best-of-Show at the Center for Photographic Art. In 2019 she published her second monograph, TREASURES: objects I’ve known all my life, and is currently working on a new book.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Most of all, I want to show viewers the beauty in people and things they might otherwise ignore. In that sense, all my work is portraiture—an image that captures the essential personality or emotions of the subject. What happens when I make a personal connection to an environment, object, feeling, or person. I take pictures of what moves me and hope the audience can feel this in my work. It can also be a projection of how I want people to see me, an ideal view of self through the lens.
Composition and balance are most important to me. I love to capture patterns, textures, and blocks of negative space with my background in textiles and fashion. With color, My goal is to capture the actual emotion that color brings to a surrounding. If the environment is warm or cool to the eye, my impulse is to capture the look of that light rather than "correcting" it. I'm always trying to preserve the existing look and feel of a moment.
My ideas come about organically, usually from a vision, drawing, or personal experience that triggers a full-blown project. I feel like the best art happens when you're not thinking about "why"—just doing. I play, plan, and prepare for a shoot, but my instincts always guide me.
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