Emily Nathan collaborates with TOMS on the spring and summer campaigns for their children’s collection, TOMS Youth. Nathan captured several children wearing TOMS against a plain backdrop on location in a Los Angeles studio.

The late photojournalist Dan Eldon inspired the spring collection. Eldon was killed in Mogadishu in 1993 while covering the Somali War for Reuters. His photography, quotes, art and even his fingerprints were all used on the shoes’ designs. When TOMS told the Eldon family about the line, the family sent along some of Eldon’s prized belongings to be included in the shoot. His camera, the one he was using the day he was killed, appears as a prop in several of the images, and his beads are worn as a belt by one of the young models.

The summer campaign features the children with popular summer props like a beach ball and sand buckets, while wearing bathing suits, t-shirts and shorts.

The campaigns were Nathan’s second and third collaboration with TOMS.

See more of Nathan’s photography here.

Emily Nathan photographs spring fashion trends for Ritz-Carlton Magazine’s Spring 2011 issue. The quarterly publication recently re-launched with a new design and a new focus on luxury, fashion, and lifestyle. For their Spring 2011 issue, the magazine wanted to capture the both the iconic and old San Francisco and the new and fresh San Francisco. The city’s many juxtapositions are reflected in the clothes and the locations.

Nathan captured the model in various locations around the Bay Area over the course of a two-day shoot. Locations like City Lights Bookstore and Crissy Field represent the old San Francisco, while the shot in the tower at the deYoung Museum, seen above, represent the new San Francisco. As much of Nathan’s portfolio is lifestyle and outdoors, many of the shots were taken outside into a wider landscape. The crew headed into the Marin Headlands, where Nathan photographed the model overlooking the city.

See more of Emily Nathan’s photography here.

Publication: Ritz-Carlton Magazine
Issue: Spring 2011
Creative Director: James Truman
Photo Editor: Cory Jacobs
Photographer: Emily Nathan
Model: Margareth Sands
Stylist: Shannon Dunn

Emily Nathan captures the San Francisco food collective OPENrestaurant for the March/April issue of Vogue Australia Living. The project was started by Stacie Pierce, Jerome Waag, and Sam White, all part of the Chez Panisse restaurant staff. It mixes the avant garde art scene with the organic and sustainable food culture of the Bay Area. OPENrestaurant explores issues around food and society by turning the restaurant into an artistic medium and making it available to cooks, farmers, artists, and activists. The collective meets one night every few months to enjoy local food and to discuss a specific issue.

Nathan photographed the collective in a warehouse in Allameda on the edge of the bay. Many of the collective’s resources and food come directly from the bay. Nathan captured the chaos and bustle of the event with a digital medium format camera and a 35 mm. She wanted it to be more lifestyle rather than a standard food shoot. Nathan calls the piece “a fun but sophisticated story with a documentary element.”

The March/April issue of Vogue Living Australia is on newsstands now.

See more of Emily Nathan’s photography here.

Publication: Vogue Living Australia
Issue: March/April
Photography: Emily Nathan



Emily Nathan traveled to Wilbur Hot Springs in California to capture the wedding of Eunice and Daniel for the Spring 2010 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings. Eunice and Daniel’s wedding is the focal point of “The Color Issue” and Emily’s photo graces the cover. The bride took her inspiration from Tim Walker and the wedding features a parade of animal silhouette puppets, a Vaudeville-stage altar, and flea market and vintage finds.

Personal touches included garlands made of pom-poms of coffee filters that Eunice hand-dyed, custom-made cockades by Tricia Roush worn as boutonnieres, and Eunice’s hand-stitched dress by Iain Harris Bartlett. Guests dined on bites such as fried green tomatoes, Tahitian vanilla and mocha buttercream cake, and a pie bar. The signature cocktail of the night was “Marital Bliss,” a blend of St. Germain elderflower liqueur, Hendrick’s gin, lime, and soda.

The wedding took place at a solar-powered hotel about two hours north of Napa. During the wedding, Emily Nathan encountered nature in more ways than one. Upon her first evening, she met with bulls in the dark of the night and had to shoo them away. Later on, Nathan and the Martha Stewart team explored the area to scout the perfect field of wildflowers to hold the invitations. They found a small patch of purple clovers and arose the next morning at dusk to shoot the intricate wedding invitations resting within the blooms.

All still-life shots were taken the day before the wedding to ensure their pristine, photo-ready condition. Nathan stayed to celebrate the union and photograph the wedding. In order to be considered for the magazine, prospective brides and grooms must submit wedding material to Martha Stewart Weddings. The attention to detail that Eunice and Daniel dedicated to their wedding is chronicled in Nathan’s images.

Martha Stewart Weddings Spring 2010 issue is available on newsstands now, be sure to keep an eye out for the cover and feature story by Emily Nathan.

Credits:
Senior Style Editor: Katie Berry
Associate Style Editor: Britni Wood
Art Director: Brooke Reynolds
Photography: Emily Nathan

Curator Carol McCusker had a vision, put out a call for entry, and one thousand submissions flooded in from 200 artists. McCusker narrowed it down to forty five photographs that now form “New Directions 2010,” showing currently at Wall Space Gallery. Emily Nathan’s “Green Sea” epitomizes the premise of the “down and out” motif of the show.

“Down and out” refers to the point of view of looking down from a high vantage point and out to a vanishing horizon that Albert Boime called a “Magisterial Gaze.” Ms. McCusker hoped that “the photographs would show a variety of ways that ‘down’ and ‘out’ can be imaged; and the emotional liberation such points-of-view can have on our often confined and overly responsible psyches.”

During her travels, Emily Nathan shot “Green Sea” in Byron Bay, Australia.

Explains Nathan, “In my travel images I have two main visual threads. In ‘travel’ images I usually describe a place by focusing on one detail from the traveler’s perspective. I direct the viewer to see a place how I choose to see it (through the light on someone’s face, a detail in a building, the color or texture of water in a given place). In ‘turismo’ images I usually frame up the travelers themselves- exploring how people relate to and visit within our communities and our natural world. “Green Sea” falls a bit in both areas, but ultimately it is a “turismo” image because the subject matter to me (as a surfer myself) is the surfers.”

Says McCusker of Nathan’s “Green Sea,” “[Emily Nathan’s surfers] hold enough odd beauty in their familiarity… to make us see the extraordinary in common vistas.”

Concludes Nathan, “The ocean is not ours for taking so much as its ours to share and respect. Respect the ocean and your fellow surfers and then you can experience the divine.”

New Directions 2010 is showing now at Wall Space in Seattle, Washington. To view more of Emily Nathan’s work, view her portfolio here.