Editor’s Pick: Jacqueline Harriet’s True Colors

Photo © Jacqueline Harriet

Jacqueline Harriet is an unassuming photography powerhouse. Still in school (she’s a senior at NYU majoring in Visual Culture through Photography & Film), the 21-year-old has not only interned for Vogue photographer Norman Jean Roy, but has also racked up quite a few iconic images of her own. Her street portrait of supermodel Cara Delevingne shot during Fashion Week a few years back gained her Internet cred and led to jobs backstage at Fashion Week for Refinery29 and Harper’s BAZAAR.

Although Harriet loves fashion photography, the native Californian equally relishes creating soulful, documentary portraits like this one of New Jersey-based celebrity impersonator Michele Marzano. In the performer’s “diva shows,” she embodies the likenesses of Elizabeth Taylor, Mae West, Marilyn Monroe and Cyndi Lauper (in her pre-show getup here) all over the Tri-state area. Originally conceived for a photojournalism class project, the series became more extensive as Harriet visited Marzano four times for 6- to 10-hour stints, and then shot an accompanying short film.

“Her life and her environment are so visually pleasing, interesting and chaotic in the most fun way,” Harriet says of Marzano. “She was so down to shoot and let me into her life. She didn’t have a lot of boundaries up so it forced a really great bond between us.”

This particular image was shot with Harriet’s Canon 5D Mark II and 28mm lens in order to stay wide and capture the contents of Marzano’s home. “With someone like her, you have to see the beads on the side of her doorframe; you have to get the eccentric kitschy stuff she has in her home,” Harriet says. “I need her in context because the whole room is her.”