One Fall day in 2017, I was tearing up old magazines in my very first Brooklyn bedroom, a Carrol Gardens blessing with a view of the Statue of Liberty. You don’t know what you have ’til you have to move out.
I came across this gorgeous 2-page spread. I loved the soft, sweet, girly teddy splayed out against the gritty backdrop. I innocently tore out the pages. How could I have predicted how the idea would haunt me?
5 years later, God sent one of His angels down to me and I met Alex. 3 more years later, she posted this photo to her IG Story.
I immediately begged her to hear me out on a little concept I’d wanted to shoot since that fateful Carrol Gardens afternoon.
Alex happens to have an enormous collection of Rilakkuma plushies. In these impromptu photos from my birthday, you can see why Alex was my perfect muse - her room looks like I pulled it right from my own Pinterest board.
Alex was raised on plushies, growing up with vintage Peter Rabbit stuffed animals from her mother’s childhood collection. Alex struggled with nightmares throughout childhood into teenhood, and her mom claimed her plushies were her army to ward off the bad dreams.
Alex sent me this photo of her very first teddy bear while staying at her childhood home in Boston. Stab me in the heart with a fork. She always misses her Brooklyn plush collection when she’s away.
Alex is a lifelong stan of the Sanrio multiverse. She collects several characters like Hello Kitty, My Melody, and Pompompurin, but Rilakkuma is her favorite. Rilakkuma (Japanese for “bear in relaxed mood”) is just a little guy that loves to be lazy, nap, and take it easy. Hard to argue with that. His friend, Korilakkuma (“child relaxed bear”) is my personal favorite.
I have to admit the other draw of casting Alex as my talent - she’s my bestie. Meaning, I could count on her patience for the absolute asinine situations that come with the territory of run-and-gun location shooting in New York. Like me rolling around all over Queens sidewalks to get those perfect angles until I caught a wicked cold the next day. But hey, anything for the shot.
I started feverishly pulling my inspo. Pinterest just made it too easy - it seems there’s a whole sub genre of City Boy Rilakkuma. I couldn’t find anything with Rilakkuma that also included a human subject though. When you can’t find the exact visuals you’re looking for, it’s a giant art direction green light. It can make pitching your concept more difficult, but it’s how you know you’re onto something original.
Now it’s time for me to unleash my unadulterated passion for my other inspiration puzzle piece, my top all time favorite tv show, Rilakkuma and Karou. If you haven’t tuned into this Netflix Original, you have not known true joy. It’s not only the romp of a lifetime, it’s also a fascinating stop-motion masterpiece. I’ve revisited it many times - my first watch was on vacation in Tulum, Mexico, then again on vacation in LA, and again for this shoot.
Only watch the original though. The spinoff, Rilakkuma’'s Theme Park Adventure, seems like a rush job. They rely much more on special effects rather than live stop motion, forfeiting all its original quality and charm. It’s a crime. In this house we don’t acknowledge the spinoff.
When I started producing this, I’d just gone to Forest Hills, Queens for the first time on an exploring date with James. I was captivated. It’s got that unique beauty you can only find in deep Queens.
I returned several times to bring friends to Forest Hills Park. The air smells so delicious and naturey in there, you forget you’re in New York.
Everywhere I looked, I saw gorgeous little vignettes and snapped one million pics. When it was time to choose a shoot location, the location scouting for my moodboard was already done for me.
Scouting allowed me to pre-vet a diner - The Classic - where we could recover after our heat-stroke inducing shoot over a delicious meal. Don’t worry, Rilakkuma was eating good too.
I had so much fun jamming with Alex on styling. She sent me tons of photos from her personal wardrobe that made it so easy to map out our plan.
Ever the artist, she even did her own Rilakkuma-themed nails. Don’t you just die?
And for the last step in my pre-visualization, I demonically collaged for the 2 whole days right before the shoot.
I’m obsessed with using collage to manifest really complicated, aspirational shots. I love seeing these right up next to my final images, they feel prophetic.
My hope is to one day revisit this concept and scale up the production with a sprinter van, beauty crew, and prop stylist. If any of these sound like you, email me.
I’ll never pass up an opportunity to make a thank-you dessert. This time it was Claire Saffitz’s black and white cookies for Alex. Claire’s my favorite recipe developer in the game. She has this way of taking classic desserts and elevating them so much you wanna cry when they hit your tongue. These are no exception. They tasted like ice cream, but also cake, but also a cookie.
I also made this utterly gorgeous Hokkaido, aka Japanese milk bread, for her. It was my first time trying milk bread King Arthur Baking recipes have never steered me wrong.
There’s not much I love more than photographing my friends. It’s what I grew up on. It’s how I tricked girls into being my friend in high school. I’d invite them over to put on weird makeup for some photos. We’d shoot in my bedroom that I renovated into a tiny studio all by myself by painting it white, ripping up the carpet, and refinishing the floors. I didn’t find out I was shooting fashion and beauty photography that whole time until my last year of photo school. I find my naivety astonishing but pure.
It’s truly addictive to use my photos to show my friends how beautiful they are to me. There’s this element of surprise and shock at seeing their own beauty reflected back at them, like, “I look like that?” Yes, you do. Sometimes I feel that’s my purpose on earth, to share art with the people I love.
