Studio 2
Will Crooks
Photography
“The feeling of existing as an outsider in the South drives a lot of my work, but it’s that same interest in the enigmatic identity of the South that informs the direction. Whether I’m capturing eccentric strangers through street portraits or redefining a familiar place to one with cinematic romanticism, I’m working to re-contextualize the common ideas of the South. I am drawn to outsider cultures and look to explore the lives of those individuals that exist beyond the conservative norms prevalent in the South. My obsession with photography as a tool for personal expression can be fully expressed by the concept that the medium literally stops time.”
Biography
Will Crooks hails from the Midwest, but somehow only has the accent when he says, “bagel.” He could double as Saitama from One Punch Man and only wears various shades of blue or olive. In a past life, Will was an accountant and almost went to grad school for Comparative Philosophy. Don’t ask him about The Empiricists or The Kyoto School unless you have a few hours. If you can’t ever get his attention during a photoshoot, it’s because he’s doing mathematical lighting ratios in his head.
Will found his way into photography after discovering the street portraiture work of Scott Schuman, The Sartorialist. Throughout his college years, Will could be found roaming the streets of Greenville, SC making street portraits of strangers that each possessed a cinematic quality of personal style. Over the course of four years, Will made over 2000 portraits of strangers for his blog WAC Avenue before transitioning to working full time in the editorial world as the visual director and photographer for Community Journals. Now Will spends his days making personal work revolving around otherness in the South and roaming the Southeast doing editorial work for various publications including The New York Times, British GQ, and The Washington Post.