We were lucky to catch up with Annie Evans recently and have shared our conversation below.
Annie , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
I feel like my whole “photography career” I’m always taking a risk, whether it’s moving to a new town to expand myself in my field of work or simply having this “if it works out, great. If not, oh well” attitude towards making photography my full-time job. I think the biggest risk for me is offering my services for free, or at the very least making it a donation based where performers can still contribute, which that is to say, I still get hired on to do paid work (sometimes I’ll get paid way below my current rate). At the end of it all, I’m just glad to be a part of a performance that I’m pretty sure a lot of time and money went into and being a part of a music/drag community and making new connections is what I find to be most important to me then making money (which is also a nice thing).
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I got my start in photography when I was in high school in 2009 and going into college, I photographed many subjects in between those times. But in my heart, I still felt lost in what I wanted to do with my photography until January 2017 I decided to take my camera to a local punk show and after that moment I knew I wanted to photograph concerts. Since then, I have photographed many concerts and drag performances, as of recently, within the Sacramento, the Bay Area, and Portland, Oregon (which is where I currently reside at). My work has been featured in some music magazines and blogs like Maximum Rock’n’roll (when they did print), New Noise Magazine, I photographed the first edition of In Defense of Ska by Aaron Carnes, when it first came out in 2021. I also released my photo magazines over the years, Sacramento Is Burning came out in 2018 that catalogs my photos of punk rock bands within Sacramento, California from 2017-2018 (it’s getting a 2nd edition coming out very soon as I’m writing this). Girls Burn Boys came out in 2020 that cataloged the many women musicians I photographed from 2018-2019, and Sounds That Burn is the last one that came out in 2022 that focused on almost everything that I photographed within a one-year span (it also acts my coming out trans story).
I’m proud of the community and friends I made over these past 8 years and how it broke me out of my shell to take a small risk which led me here to living in Portland. I never thought my photos would look so good and mean something to people, so I’m grateful that my photos are making a difference and seeing people be impacted like that.
My photographic inspirations include: Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, David LaChapelle, Charles Peterson, and Edward Colver.
General inspirations: The Decline of Western Civilization documentaries by Penelope Spheeris, John Waters, Hideaki Anno, Gregg Araki, Mike Patton, Nine Inch Nails, and record stores whenever I need to get out of my own head and browse for something cool.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
There is always cool and intimate shit to see that doesn’t require you to pay with an arm and a leg.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Meeting new people and building up those connections that want to include me to photograph cool events. I had people over the years send me messages out of the blue asking if I could photograph their event. I remember one time being at a coffee shop and someone recognized me because they saw my work online, and asked if they could hire me to photograph a huge drag event at night (I said yes!)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://camthephotographer.us/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/photofromcam/
Image Credits
Annie C. Evans