Genre Bending With Rachel

January 17, 2022
1 min read

This week, as work on the Portraits from a Distant Era series continues, I wanted to highlight one of my favorite collaborators, Rachel Granda-Gluski—a performer and cosplayer with a wealth of talent, experience, and creativity—who has also portrayed characters from fairytale and folklore, often interpreted through different genres.

Rachel and I met randomly at a dinner party in 2013 hosted by veteran cosplayer and performer, Tabitha Burch, though we didn’t do a shoot together until 2109, when we did four projects created by Mary-Kate Arnold in her excellent Fantasy Is Reality sequence. Those projects were Disney Noir; Shakespeare’s Heroines (as D&D Characters); Contemporary Game of Thrones; and Modern Rococo.

Snow White and the 7, Disney Noir

Before “The Hunted Princess” in The People of Light and Shadow, I shot a previous Snow White portrait that was (and still is) one of my favorite portraits. Rachel put together this fantastic, vibrant, technicolor interpretation of a noir style Snow White. As we shot near the pool table, Rachel picked up a red ball to stand in as the fateful apple from the tale. That was when we noticed that the red ball was the “7.”

Ariel, Shakespeare’s Heroines

In this Shakespeare’s Heroines session, Rachel created a costume for Ariel from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but interpreted as a character class from Dungeons & Dragons (where Ariel was either a sorcerer or arcane trickster). I love the complementary pinks and blues she used in this look, as well as the sea colors in her costume and makeup, from sea green to turquoise to gray to blue.

Cersei (and Joffrey) in Contemporary Game of Thrones

A fun, spontaneous session shot very quickly on a cold winter morning in early 2019 by the lakefront on glorious analog color film. Rachel created a gender-bent modern royal look for her Joffrey opposite Gaby Martineau‘s Cersei Lannister.

Modern Rococo

Modern Rococo was another winter 2019 session that we shot in a small bedroom with a few off camera flashes and some colored gels that went with the pastel hues Rachel wore.

And More…

I’m always astounded when I think of all the time and attention to detail that my friends put into their costumes, and keeping this in mind inspires me to create better images. Rachel Granda-Gluski in particular puts so much thought and work into her outfits and just as much into her poses.

I leave you to admire a previously shared image from a session she helped create called The Sea Is Dark and Full of Sirens, shot just prior to starting The People of Light and Shadow. Rachel is a true pro, and I hope we have the opportunity to do many more projects together.

Next week, if all goes according to plan, we will return to The People of Light and Shadow series with “The Merrow…”

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Steven Townshend is a fine art/portrait photographer and writer with a background in theatre, written narrative, and award-winning game design. As a young artist, Steven toured the US and Canada performing in Shakespeare companies while journaling their moments on paper and film. In his transition from stage to page, Steven continued to work as a theatre photographer, capturing dramatic scenes while incorporating elements of costume, makeup, and theatrical lighting in his work. Drawn to stories set in other times and places, Steven creates works through which fellow dreamers and time travelers might examine their own humanity or find familiar comfort in the reflections of the people and places of a distant era.

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The All Worlds Traveller

Welcome to The All Worlds Traveller, an eclectic collection of thoughts, pictures, and stories from a Distant Era. Illustrated with Distant Era art and photographs, these pages explore the stories and worlds of people beyond the here and now, and the people and creative processes behind such stories. This is a blog about photography and narrative; history and myth; fantasy, science-fiction, and the weird; creation and experience. This is a blog about stories.

Steven Townshend

I’m Steven Townshend—your guide, scribe, editor, and humble narrator. The All Worlds Traveller is my personal publication, an exploratory conversation about stories and how we interact with them, from photographs to narratives to games—a kind of variety show in print. It is a conversation with other artists who explore the past, the future, and the fantastical in their work. Not one world—but all worlds. Where Distant Era shows stories in images, The All Worlds Traveller is all about the words.

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Distant Era creates fine art and portrait photographs of people and places from imagined pasts, possible futures, and magical realities. In collaboration with other artists, we evoke these distant eras with theatrical costume and makeup, evocative scenery, and deliberate lighting, and we enhance them with contemporary tools to cast these captured moments in the light of long ago or far away. We long to walk the lion-decorated streets of Babylon, to visit alien worlds aboard an interstellar vessel, and to observe the native dances of elves. Our images are windows to speculative realities and postcards from the past. They are consolation for fellow time travelers who long to look beyond the familiar scenery of the present and gaze upon the people and places of a distant era.

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