Night 3 was extra special because drumroll please I got a ticket! I met Kwinn in a Facebook group because she was looking for someone to go to the show with and, well, you know I would die to be there! But because I can’t turn off my work brain (and because I do truly adore the fashion) you know I snagged some fan photos, too!
Arin Ray: Lincoln Hall, Chicago /
Arin Ray put on a swoon-worthy performance at Lincoln Hall last week and I feel honored to have been able to capture it!
Harry's House Chicago, Night 2: Fan Fashion /
Night 2! Everyone brought the looks! I’m going to try to mix up the categories every night to keep it interesting. If you’d like to see the other nights, the New York ones from last year are here and here and here and Chicago night 1 is here.
Thank you for everyone who let me take their photos! If you see yourself and would like your photo, please email me at estorie@outlook.com.
Also, if you like these photos and would like to hire me, email me!
And if you’d like to support a local artist, my venmo is @estorie. Thank you!
as it was
creativi-tee
denim & duos
a pop of pink
“this night, it sparkles…”
visiting the Fruit Man
little black dress
signs of the times
I don’t have a clever title for this section, but here are some super creative homemade looks!
the end!
Oh, look! It’s me! Someone offered to take my photo and I said “yes” so here we are.
Harry's House Chicago, Night 1: Fan Fashion /
I’ve been looking forward to this for a whiiiiile (ever since New York—which you can see here and here and here). So without further ado, here are some of the lovely people and amazing outfits at Harry’s House on night 1 in Chicago. I hope you enjoy them!
If you see yourself and would like your photo, please email me at estorie@outlook.com!
Also, if you like these photos and would like to hire me, email me!
And if you’d like to support a local artist, my venmo is @estorie. Thank you!
Watermelon Sugar Vibes
Birthday Babes
Sign of the Times
To a Tee
Boots and Boas
Besties
You Know the Song…
DIY-not
“When I say ‘yee’…”
that one Grammy’s look…
The Windy City
Fun fact: the gal on the left and I actually met at the Sigrid and Ber show last week and bonded over Harry and Taylor. She was the one who figured out that my outfit was a loofah costume!
Dermot Kennedy: Wrigley Busking /
The parallels between Dermot Kennedy’s Chicago event and his New York City busking in December were not lost on me. In December I was exhausted and hope broken and falling apart in every category of human entropy. And that wasn’t the worst of it. But I showed up, camera in hand, to Washington Square Park. I remember feeling hopeful for the first time in a long time.
Jump ahead to August. I’m in a new city, a familiar one—and dare I say, my favorite one. Suddenly the quality of life that felt exhaustingly out of reach feels vividly close. I feel happy, found, quietly and preciously peaceful. Better days came, just like the song I heard in December promised me they would. And today I showed up, yet again, camera in hand, to Wrigley Field. The hopeful feeling still exists in this place.
And despite the distance and the differences, still these songs have followed me all the way, these two busking events bookending two parallel moments in two starkly different seasons—both literally and in my life.
I’m so grateful to be trusted with such beautiful days. Thank you to everyone who chatted with me. Your echoing back of the melodies into the air is what makes those spaces feel hopeful and beautiful: never stop singing. (P.S. if you see yourself and want a copy of your photo, please email me at estorie@outook.com!)
Inhaler: Warsaw /
Sour Tour Bus: NYC, Day 1 /
If you know me, you know I love a good pop-up and I love some good outfits, so when Olivia Rodrigo’s tour had a New York pop-up and a prom theme, I had to be there. The icing on the cake was I even made some friends in line (literally the cutest humans)!
Euphoria Dance Party /
On Saturday night, well past my self-imposed bedtime, I photographed a Euphoria-themed dance party. Partly photo-booth, partly candids, I literally danced through the evening. The night combined humans, glitter, dancing, and a drink called “fuck Nate Jacobs”—what could you not like about it?! These are some of my favorite shots from the night; check out more at If You Know It, Sing It’s site.
This couple were newlyweds and honestly I’m obsessed. So cute.
Honestly, it’s giving me tumblr vibes and I’m here for it.
Hayd: Bowery Ballroom & Portraits /
I have this thing I call “sad in a fun way.” It’s the sort of sad that you need to feel whole, to feel fully, to let the sadness pass and pass through you and move past you. Sometimes I can’t move on without a cry. And sometimes I’ll go to sad movies alone and let myself feel it all and take it in and let it go.
I listened to Hayd’s music on Wednesday before his show at Bowery and it felt like that. I had to stop listening after a while because I grew too nostalgic and melancholic and I needed to get work done. But I think that’s a sign of something well-written and well-felt: that you can’t help but feel it, too.
Jump ahead to the show. I got there at doors to secure my spot and since there wasn’t a photo pit, I landed right in the middle of a group of folks I didn’t know (which is really the only way it happens when you arrive somewhere by yourself). But this felt different. Slowly the solitary folks and duos became a group, as they asked each other’s names and invited each other to tacos after the show. Folks sat in groups on the ground, waiting and playing games (can we normalize sitting down between sets?).
Part way through his set, Hayd began describing the isolating nature of sadness and hard feelings, but the magic of all of us feeling it together now. Admitting we all feel it, and even singing into the feeling, takes something isolating and makes it a conduit of connection: “We’re not alone—we’re together as you can see.”
When he left, the person to my right wiped tears away and quoted the iconic Euphoria line: “Is this fucking play about us?!”
And maybe that’s the point: it is. We all feel the same things, but some folks have the magic of putting those feelings into words and into songs and making the rest of us feel less alone, by giving us a space to feel and sing the same lonely feelings together.
So, yes, the fucking play—the fucking song—is about us, all of us, alone and together tonight.
