"Every person I've met in the past year, we've instantly gravitated towards one another - like crazy gap magnets" - Joshua Woods
Photographer Joshua Woods recently created a shoot for Dazed Digital simply about gaps. A far cry from his look books for Alexander Wang, Woods decided to focus a shoot solely about gaps and embracing them. When interviewed by Dazed he commented that he had started to pay more attention to what made him unique, one thing being the gap in his teeth, and due to this he wanted to create a shoot around people embracing and celebrating their own identities and creating a fun light hearted visual around this.
The shoot featured models against blank or blue backgrounds in stark lighting smiling and showing off their beautiful gap. I enjoy how there is minimal prop use as it allows their teeth to be the main focus rather than being overly stylised. The styling also cleverly compliments the rest of the tones of the shoot and again doesn't take any shine of the models gnashers. Although the quality is very high the post production skilfully gives the shoot a more organic and improvised feel through filters and editing.
When casting the shoot Woods' only criteria for the models was that they had to have a gap in their teeth. Although it could be argued that Rimmel attempted to embrace the gapped tooth before Joshua Woods by including Georgia May Jagger in their "Get the London look" campaign, I feel as though Joshua Woods has managed to celebrate inclusivity, embracing identity and being playful within photography much more stronger and effortless than Rimmel did.
I really enjoy and relate to shoots that are very simple visually yet have a really strong message behind them. Not all shoots have to be of the highest quality, working with top people in the industry and feature clothes by admired designers. Joshua Woods' editorial is a prime example of how a simple message of embracing identities can create beautiful and inspiring outcomes that no high budgeted planned out shoot could ever achieve.
SHAUN EVANS
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