I live on the North side of Chicago in a lovely little neighborhood that has no name — for locals, it’s not Ravenswood, it’s not Lincoln Square, it’s not North Center, but it’s kinda all of them. My particular block/corner is very familiar and small-town-ey. It’s probably because there is a Starbuck’s about a half a block from my front door. And I’ve met many interesting and really lovely people at my neighborhood Starbuck’s.

One of the many lovely and interesting people I’ve met is a woman named Linda. After a number of chats over late-morning weekend lattes, Linda made a couple of suggestions to me. One was to get Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, which I promptly downloaded onto my Kindle. The other suggestion was to check out a local photographer by the name of Erika Dufour. Well all I have to say is that my neighborhood Starbuck’s has yet to let me down.

Erika’s work often has a very physical element to it. She is a trained ballet dancer and also studies a form of Chinese Martial Arts called Wushu. Her interest in the way the body moves and the shapes that it can make are evident in her work and are undoubtedly part of what draws me to her. That and her ability to be super-girly (see those gorgeous beauty shots above!) As I’ve mentioned here many times, I am a very big lover of all things dance and I’ve been absolutely dying to do a studio shoot with a dancer — maybe Erika is the girl I’ve been looking for! 

all images lovingly borrowed from ErikaDufour.com

Tags: Erika Dufour, Erika Dufour photography

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 22nd, 2010 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.