Redd Foxx - AJ

Another photograph taken at 14th and Howard, the building just north of downtown St Louis.  The whole place is covered in crazy graffiti, splashes of color on an otherwise drab concrete building.  These pillars run the length of both sides of the building, which has to be at least a hundred yards long.  It takes me about eight minutes to walk from one end down to the other.

This is my friend AJ.  She had gone thrift store shopping a few days prior to this and asked if I had any requests for something for her to get/wear at our upcoming shoot.  I said pick something you wouldn't normally wear, something crazy and out of the ordinary.  She said she immediately found this super colerful and wildly patterned dress and knew that's what she was getting.

She's had those shoes for a long while and we thought the clashing patterns would be fun, especially since the shoes were black and white and the dress decidedly not.  Once we got there, the sun was starting to slip down towards the horizon so I got to work as quickly as I could.  We actually took a lot of photographs that day, maybe 300 in an hour and a half, by the time the sun was out of sight.

The red wig was the final touch on her outfit and I fell in love with the look almost instantly.  The graffiti above her head was a nice coincidence.  Redd Foxx is a graffiti artist here in St. Louis and you can see his work all over the place.  Frequently, he likes to suggest you should "Fo'give Yo'self" which, spelling aside, is pretty good advice in my opinion.  And hey, with the wig, AJ really is a Red Fox.