The Voracity has also refreshed her relationships with existing clients. Williams has worked with Martha Stewart
Living for several years, and has known the magazine’s
executive editor, Yolanda Cuomo, since Williams assisted Cuomo’s husband, photographer Matthew Hranek.
“She’s one of the favorites of the magazine,” Cuomo
says. While Williams had done great work for Martha
Stewart Living and other clients in her bright, airy style, “I
just kind of knew that she had a lot more in her that she
wasn’t really given the opportunity to do commercially,”
Cuomo recalls.
When Williams showed Cuomo issue six of The
Voracity, a story about the Catskill Mountains and the
local food there told through the experiences of food
stylist Chris Lanier, Cuomo arranged for Williams and the
team that produced that issue of The Voracity to create
a story for Martha Stewart Living that will run this fall. “It
was a departure for us [visually] but everybody was super
excited by it,” Cuomo says.
The magazine sent a food editor and created the
menu for the shoot, but the art direction was left up to
Williams and her team. One of the biggest challenges
of the shoot, Williams says, was “to break out of the
thought that I was shooting for Martha Stewart. I had to
break out of trying to perfect everything the way that I
knew they would have directed me.”
For Cuomo, personal projects like The Voracity are ex-
actly what editors want to see as they look for ways to
keep the pages of magazines fresh and visually compel-
ling. “We want to be a place where photographers can
Williams: “i am now being asked ‘What do you think?’
more ... That’s pretty amazing to get to a place where
clients want your ideas and want you to carry them out.”
Top: From “Contropastasciutta,” a series of futuristic-themed food photographs. Above: From “ 7 Steps,” a story about the Castkill
Mountains and the local food there, which led to Williams and her collaborators shooting a story for Martha Stewart Living.
come and show us things and be collaborators with us,”
she says.
“Now [through the work photographers are publish-
ing online] we have access as editors to find out what
these photographers really like and what they really want
to do,” Cuomo adds. “We don’t have to look at portfolios
that have been created by an agent who is preparing it
for Ogilvy [& Mather] and then sends it to us and it has
no connection to what we’re doing.”
“It used to be that magazines had set ideas,” says Iacoi,
who worked as a photo editor at Esquire and other pub-
lications before founding Plum Reps with Kebbon. “I do
feel like [magazine editors are] more open to ideas now.
More and more people are creating their own content,
and that inspires [editors].”
While it’s great for photographers to create personal
projects that might inspire clients to offer them editorial
or advertising assignments, they should, Kebbon says,
be careful not to undermine the brand they have estab-
lished for themselves. When Williams and Mason Adams
discussed creating The Voracity with Kebbon, there was
some concern that more conservative clients might be
put off by the work.
“Photographers are tremendously versatile and I
think that that, right now, is really important for clients
to know” Kebbon explains. “But I also think that there
has to be a tie-in—if it’s disjointed, the brand does get
diluted.”
One of the reasons The Voracity has been so success-
ful for Williams is that she has explored different visual
