Joyce Carol Oates

Looking for commonalities

At the start of a sitting, you aim to break the ice. You look for commonalities and shared curiosity. But every time I tried this with Joyce Carol Oates, I put my foot in my mouth.

There was a beautiful grand piano in the living room. She said that she doesn’t play much anymore, and when I tapped a couple of keys, I said it must be out of tune. And she replied, “I just had it tuned!”

Oates’ property had a body of water on it, and when I admired it as her “own little swamp”, she exclaimed, “It’s a stream!“

Later, I told her I loved how her eyeshadow matched her shirt. She drew back, slightly mortified: “I am not wearing eyeshadow.” (I later realized it was her rose-tinted glasses, catching the light.)

***

Based on the creative direction from the New York Magazine photo team, Jody Quon, and Isabela Quintero, I set up the strobes to shoot in the kitchen. Jody thought it would be cool to do a more low-key human picture of Joyce Carol Oates. She is a larger-than-life public figure, so Jody wanted to find a way to ground her and make her relatable. Perhaps we’d picture her brushing her teeth, or washing a dish in the sink, maybe prepping food for dinner. The writer, Emma Alpern, told me that Oates’ kitchen is big and well-lit, so I got that in my mind as a setup.

Oates walked into the kitchen and saw our lights set up and had a “What’s all this about?” look on her face. I give the full-on pitch, playing up her icon status and how we want to ground her as a regular person, and then I mentioned her washing a dish in the sink, and now flabbergasted, she says, “I’m a writer!“

More than once, she said something like, “People come to photograph me, and they do something straightforward, then they leave,” which sounded like a threat.

I tried to flesh out this idea of her doing something grounded and domestic: “Maybe you’re dusting a table, or sweeping the floor. How about vacuuming?“ (Vacuuming always looks cool in a photo.) She responds, “You mean you want me doing women’s work?“ Oh, no, she’s got me! In fact, earlier she suggested doing a shot of her taking out the garbage, but I thought it was a bit unappealing visually, so I said no. She totally gave me an exit ramp, and I missed it. (I should’ve suggested chopping wood!)

Now, I was in a corner, and I really couldn’t argue. Asking a Second Wave Feminist, and a literary legend, to do domestic work just seems like such an obvious mess up now that I tell the story, but seriously, it was not obvious when I was pitching it.

To change the mood and hoping for a reset, I suggested we go to her yard to do some shooting. Picking up a giant sunhat, she said, “When I go outside, I always wear this hat.” Of course, it was ungainly and not so attractive, but at this point, I was in no position to make an argument.

Graciously, she suggested that she do some gardening, and I leapt at the opportunity. She grabbed a gardening hoe and started digging out weeds. In fact, she was really into it.

The next setup was doing a simple portrait against a blue seamless. She had some amazing sunlight coming into the house, and I placed the paper so that the light came through the trees and then struck her and the paper. It looked pretty dynamic, and I thought I could make something out of this.

Luckily, my assistant Sophia intuitively knew that making small talk with Oates would facilitate the shoot a little. Most of the pictures are of Oates talking, which is frustrating, but it did get her to relax, and I certainly got to some poses because she found a few ways to move her hands and adjust her body.

After our heated exchange in the kitchen, it became clear that she expected portraits to be simple and unsurprising. In fact, after the session, she brought over a book of portraits of writers and poets, Children of Grass by B.A. Van Sise. Oates walked us through each page, expressing distress and puzzlement as to why people would agree to pose in such bizarre circumstances, or even why the photographer would want it.

As she was going through, the three of us had a good time, as Sophia and I would chime in with words of appreciation for specific images, and she would scoff at how “crazy and ridiculous“ they were. “Why would anyone agree to do that!” It turns out that Oates is fantastically imaginative with words, but perhaps not as visually adventurous.

Top Image: Joyce Carol Oates, shot in Princeton, NJ, May 25, 2026.

Bottom Image: Oates and her hoe.