If you're ever having your picture taken, pray that Caroline LeFevre is on the other side of the camera. A rare ability to draw out her subjects' best, most natural selves—maybe with a laugh, a subtle hand gesture, or a glance over the shoulder—is a hallmark of her portraiture (which, we might add, is refreshingly devoid of any wan, sunken-eyed PYT's or panty-flashing party girls, both of which could reasonably be expected from a young, female photographer in New York City).
LeFevre, who's also working towards her masters at Pratt's Information and Library Science program, attributes some of her talent to an insatiable curiosity. "In school, I was never audacious enough to present myself an artist," says LeFevre. "But now that I look over the work I make, and see how much my thoughts are consumed with ideas, I've given over to the identity of an artist who is just trying to visually understand and interpret life, and the culture of our times."
LeFevre is careful to draw a distinction between her commercial work — which tends towards a natural lightness and optimism — from the more experimental images she creates for herself. "For my personal work, I tend to make images rather than take images," she explains. "I like for my work to show that process of making." A recent series, for example, depicted a single navy skirt slowly reduced to its individual pixels in 12 progressive images.
As for what she's dying to snap next, LeFevre hopes to eventually explore her longtime fascination with geology on an Icelandic fault line. "Since an early age, I have been interested in earth sciences, especially in the forces that drive plate tectonics forcing a rift valley smack dab in the middle of the country," she says. "To travel there, and photograph what I saw, would be an amazing experience."
