Glamorous photographs of female icons by New York fashion photographer Brianna Capozzi, who tells us more about her career and work
As a fashion portrait photographer, when you’ve got a CV that includes photographing celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Sabrina Carpenter, Chloë Sevigny, Pamela Anderson, Dua Lipa, Miley Cyrus, and supermodels such as Bella Hadid and Alek Wek… you’ve clearly arrived. All of them have posed for New York-based Brianna Capozzi, who has carved out a huge reputation for capturing the zeitgeist of modern fashion and sisterhood with her humorous, stylish, surreal and provocative imagery. Add to that more than 128,000 Instagram followers and three books to her name and it’s clear to see that Capozzi’s career is skyrocketing since first being published in 2014.
Her latest book, Womanizer, follows in the footsteps of 2018’s Well Behaved Women and 2024’s Sisters; both of which amply demonstrated Capozzi’s ability to photograph women with style, sensitivity and a splash of sexiness. Womanizer is a 176-page tome from the Rizzoli stable that showcases Capozzi’s innate talent for capturing the female form with nods to high fashion, pop culture and an underlying eroticism.
The book’s foreword is penned by the actress Chloë Sevigny, who states, ‘Brianna’s photos always convey both power and humour – an unlikely, but magical, combination that produces images that vibrate with wonder and surprise.’ To find out the inside story, AP caught up with Brianna Capozzi to discover her motivations, inspirations and her career journey thus far…
School of design
The New Jersey-born Capozzi originally planned to pursue a career in fashion design. In 2006, when aged 18, she moved to New York City and started studying what was known as an ‘integrated design curriculum’ at Parsons School of Design in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood of the city.
She explains, ‘I was in college when I first started taking photos. I had been making garments and wanted to document them. I started shooting a series that became more about portraying an imagined world and characters than about the clothes I was making… and the shift from designing clothing into photography felt natural. I became more interested in the image-making process and all the elements that go into creating a character than the clothes themselves.’
Victoria Beckham shoot
A self-taught photographer, Capozzi’s photographic breakthrough came when an art director saw her pictures on her Tumblr account, which she admits was ‘small’ at the time, and this led to a commission to shoot a Victoria Beckham look-book… not a bad way to kickstart a career in fashion photography! After the Beckham shoot she quickly quit her job in a Dimes store and decided to pursue her passion for photography, which initially often involved working with friends and lighting shoots with a hardware store ‘clamp lamp’.
Young, ambitious, and scrappy
Capozzi ponders on what was her big break and reveals, ‘I don’t know if I had a big break, but working with [actress] Chloë Sevigny was a pivotal moment in my career. I started shooting her a year or two into my career, thanks to [fashion stylist] Haley Wollens, and – while we were young, ambitious, and scrappy – she trusted us. At the time, I didn’t realise how unique it was for someone of her calibre to be so open to experimenting and pushing boundaries. It’s truly rare. We made this incredible shoot with her playing different characters, and people noticed that story.’
Chloë Sevigny and a lobster
The shoot that Capozzi’s referring to, saw Sevigny playing those characters for fake movie posters that Wollens and Capozzi had dreamt up, including wearing a lobster as underwear, which Sevigny claims was later offered up for dinner to Capozzi’s parents. The pictures were shot for the magazine Marfa Journal and in the foreword to Womanizer, Sevigny recalls, ‘It was a low-budget affair – folding tables for hair and make-up on Brianna’s parents’ deck. The humour she [Capozzi] projects on set, and in to the work itself, was something I hadn’t experienced in a long time, if ever. It’s still the main reason she has come to be my first request.’
In her foreword Sevigny also describes Capozzi as having ‘bravery and passion’, so I put it to Capozzi that she might inject that bravery and passion into her photography. She fires back, ’I am from New Jersey and Italian. Passion is in my blood.’
Tension and excitement
Although she was never a straight-out photography student, Capozzi’s style has been inspired by several famous photographers. ‘I’d say my biggest influence is Helmut Newton. I feel very aligned with his ideas and subjects. His photographs are never boring. Even his most simple images have a sense of tension and excitement to them. Besides him, Steven Meisel, Guy Bourdin, and Cindy Sherman are all photographers whose work I am moved by.’
She recalls, ‘I always aspired to be in fashion in some form. Originally, I wanted to be a designer and was focused on making one-of-a-kind garments by hand, which led me into photography. I love clothing and style. It articulates so much personality in the world. A specific garment can inspire me to want to make an image, and keeps me interested in making new work. I’m especially drawn to archival fashion and fashion history within specific eras and designers.
Supermodel Bella Hadid
Her images are shot on a variety of formats – 35mm, medium format, 4×5 and Polaroid. During a period of Covid quarantine she also notably shot a Vogue Italia session with supermodel Bella Hadid via FaceTime, calling Hadid back when a new idea was ready in terms of hair, make-up and props.
The conversation then switches to her creative process and, in particular, I ask her about the images in Womanizer. Capozzi replies, ‘My process varies. Sometimes it’s very D.I.Y. where I’m working entirely alone with my subject. Other times I’m collaborating with incredible teams of stylists, hair and make-up artists, set designers, lighting etcetera.
Full-throttle fashion
For the images made specifically for this book, I started with the woman. I sent casting director Julia Lange a list of women who I have always wanted to photograph but hadn’t yet, as well as cast models and close friends who I have a long-standing rapport with. I would concept the idea around them, building up from the character I want them to play.
‘My previous book was a lot of intimate nude portraits that were very stripped-back. I was excited to take it back to my roots and go full-throttle fashion for Womanizer.’
I float the idea to Capozzi that her being a woman might be a driving factor in her being able to capture such powerful images of other women, but she quickly slaps that suggestion down. ‘I don’t think of it like that personally, and have no idea what it’s like to be a man and photograph these women. I just know that I love shooting women more than anything, and I feel very powerful when I’m around them and collaborating with them.’
In-your-face images
Her 2024 book Sisters was shot over a six-year timespan and deliberately focused on sisters in their homes across the US, but Womanizer takes a much broader-brush approach. Capozzi explains, ‘While I was working on Sisters I started to look through my archive. I went through each shoot and each roll, tens of thousands of images, and started to see my work through the lens of a specific energy and type of woman: sexy, cheeky, and in-your-face, timeless and dominant.
‘Seeing specific images sit together emphasised the nuance of my images and characters in a way I had not seen so directly and vividly. With that idea in mind, it felt like the perfect time to put something out that spanned the duration of my career, mixing early works alongside new.’
Exuding style
That mixture in Womanizer includes actors, singers, models, icons, and family members, with over 130 different images, many of which exude style but would probably be filed, perhaps unfairly, under the NSFW bracket. Notably, Capozzi both dived into her archive and decided to shoot fresh work for Womanizer.
In her intro to the book Capozzi writes, ‘Whether I am shooting for my best friend in my small Brooklyn apartment, with dollar store make-up and press-on nails, or a supermodel in a garden at Villa Vizcaya, I push for that moment,’ so I ask her what that means. She reveals, ‘There is a level of intrigue and exuberance that I’m always searching for within each image that I make. I push through ideas as I’m behind the camera until something hits.
‘It could be the way their body is positioned, the expression they suddenly make, a light change, the way the hair is falling, or the composition I finally find. That makes the image mine. I know it when I see it.’
Main challenge
She adds that the main challenge of the book project was, ‘…once I decided I wanted to shoot new work for it and not have it be only a retrospective. It was hard to find the time to concept new shoots and make them all happen in the midst of campaigns and editorials.’
To edit down her career portfolio thus far to fit into the constraints of a book format ‘took months’, but Capozzi didn’t do it as a solo project – she actively asked for input and opinions. ‘I looked through every shoot and every film roll I have made for over a decade… tens of thousands of images, starting in 2012. I focused on the energy of the image. The photo had to be fun and it had to feel like the essence of my woman was coming through.
‘Once I had narrowed it down I then asked my closest friends, stylists, boyfriend and agent their opinions. I love to ask people their opinions. From there I worked closely with Carina Frey and Stephanie Barth, who designed the book, to finesse then finalise the selection, the order and layout.’
Enticing viewers
The photographs in Womanizer do clearly display artistic nods to the timeless photography of Helmut Newton – notably a shot of three models surrounding a car, clothing, styling and an inherent lack of fear when addressing nudity in pictures. There are also hints of Guy Bourdin’s influence with some of her close-up images of glossy red lips and her use of colour. But there’s also a playfulness and freshness to Capozzi’s images that projects a more modern approach, and she states she wants to ‘excite and entice’ anyone viewing her images.
As the interview draws to a close I ask Brianna Capozzi what she’s most proud of from her career and get a typically frank answer.
‘Honestly, it sounds cliché to say this, but this book. It’s such a special accomplishment to have a Rizzoli book with this many fabulous people in it shot by me… and that I continue to love the images and work that I make. I stuck to my authentic vision through the years as I navigated the industry and my evolving career. That’s not always easy and is something I hold a lot of value in.’
The book ‘Womanizer’ by Brianna Capozzi (ISBN: 978-0-88478-7643-3) is published by Rizzoli Books and has an RRP of £47.50. www.rizzoliusa.com
About Brianna Capozzi
Brianna Capozzi is a New York-based photographer. She has spent the past decade contributing to a movement of contemporary female-led fashion photography with her trademark surreal style. Her work has been published in American Vogue, British Vogue, Vogue Italia, Dazed Magazine, Interview, Pop Magazine, Double Magazine, M: Le Monde, Re-Edition Magazine, and others. She’s photographed campaigns for Gucci, Marc Jacobs, Calvin Klein, Cartier, Nike, Adidas, Victoria’s Secret, Fenty, Rare Beauty and Burberry. Capozzi shot the album cover Endless Summer Vacation for musician Miley Cyrus and her first two books were Well Behaved Women (2018) and Sisters (2024). Instagram: @briannalcapozzi
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