Autumn de Wilde

Autumn de Wilde is a Los Angeles-based portrait, editorial, and documentary photographer. She was one of PDN's 30 in 2007, and has since gone on to photograph some of the world's most famous celebrities. She is most well-known for her work documenting musicians, as well as her somewhat recent entry into fashion and advertising photography, particularly for the fashion brand Rodarte and the TV show "Girls." She's also one of the reasons I ever formed an interest in photography.

Autumn's father, Jerry de Wilde, was a well-known counterculture documentary photographer in the 60s and 70s who found his voice from Robert Frank. His influence can be seen in many of Autumn's images. In spite of varying vastly in style from snapshot-esque to extremely formal, her portraiture tends to maintain a deeply classic look that's reminiscent of 1960s music photography.

Autumn's work is influential in my current project because I'm still working out where I want to go with the subject matter. At first I was leaning toward photographing artists around Detroit, but as I've been sending out emails, musicians seem to be the most responsive and supportive of the project above any other type of artist around the city. When I started taking photographs several years ago, it was always of bands and musicians. I think I might take the project back to my own roots and change the subject matter to document musicians around the city. Given Detroit's rich musical history and my eternal infatuation with it, I think documenting the music scene here in the Detroit area would be very rewarding.