Hungr y
for More
looking for a way to introduce a new style of work to her
repertoire without confusing her existing clients, Anna Williams
developed an online project that allowed her to show off her
range, expand her brand, and land commissions from new and
existing clients alike. by conor risch
© Mason ada Ms
Tim Ryan, a creative director at The Gate Worldwide, hired Williams to create an ad based on this image from “Miss Scarlet,”
the fourth issue of The Voracity, which featured a series of photographs of carnivorous plants.
all photos © anna Willia Ms
After estAblishing A cAreer As A food,
still-life and lifestyle photographer with
an enviable list of commercial and edito-
rial clients, Anna Williams found herself in
a common situation for photographers:
the bright, fresh style she was known for
had also become limiting. she was “do-
ing a lot of the same stuff over and over
again” for clients, she recalls. “i felt like i
had a lot more in me to explore.”
though you wouldn’t know it to look
at her work for clients like Martha Stewart
Living or Williams-sonoma, Williams has
a darker side and is capable of creating
grittier work. seeking a platform where
she could show off her creative range, she
decided to launch the Voracity, an online
journal dedicated to her representations
of “hunger, consumption and beauty.”
over the past two years, Williams and
a team of collaborators that includes her
husband, Mason Adams, who writes text
and serves as creative director for the
Voracity, have produced seven conceptual
series or “issues” of the journal, that have
breathed new life into Williams’s work,
and have resulted in several editorial as-
signments and commercial jobs.
the Voracity also gives Williams’s reps
a great tool with which to promote her
versatility. Marcia Kebbon and nancy Jo
iacoi at Plum reps represent Williams, and
both of them have e-mailed links to the
Voracity to clients and been pleased with
the response they’ve received. they’ve
even heard from people they haven’t ap-
proached, a sign that people are sharing
and talking about the Voracity.
“i get e-mails from art directors i’ve nev-
er spoken with, art buyers i haven’t talked
to in a while, or people just saying how in-
spired they are by it and how excited they
are to see the next [issue],” says Kebbon.
tim ryan, a creative director at the
agency the gate Worldwide, saw an im-
age in issue four of the Voracity, which
featured a story about carnivorous plants,
and hired Williams for a shoot based on
that photograph. “i got that job because
he kept going back to that image,” Williams
says, adding, “this one job paid for all the
different [issues] that we’ve done.”
in March, Williams landed jobs for a
fashion catalogue and a commercial elec-
tronics company based on work those cli-
ents saw in the Voracity. both of the jobs
are product launches, Kebbon says.
in addition to landing her new clients,
