Artist Profile: Providence Photographer Brittanny Taylor

Brittanny Taylor has one rule for clients when they enter her studio: no negative self-talk. This principle affirms a larger mission of celebrating and empowering, and extends beyond images. The Providence-based photographer also offers tarot reading, empowerment coaching, and yoga. During these sessions she works with clients to bring their true selves to the fore. “Throughout all the modalities I’ve worked through, I’ve seen people have such a disconnect with themselves,” she says. “And my goal is to help people figure out what wholeness looks like for them.”

Taylor often works with small business owners to craft a brand identity through their photographs. Highlighting their individuality, she says, promotes authentic interactions with their own future clients. “I want their personality, their essence, their business to shine through in our photos,” she says. “I don’t want them to pretend to be someone else, because they’re great right now.” Complementing this is her approach to empowerment coaching, in which she helps clients – many of whom are struggling to get started or stuck on a project – to create organizational strategies and systems that work for them and enable them to produce their strongest work.

These grounding techniques became all the more crucial during the pandemic, especially for Taylor’s small business owner clients. “Especially as time goes on, with this pandemic, I think we’re realizing how much of our lives were based around outside forces, and even more so now where we have such a sense of no control over our lives… I think now more than ever, people need to have a deeper [knowledge] of themselves, and be in tune with their mindset, their bodies, whatever they consider spiritual for them.”

Taylor grew up in Providence, receiving her bachelor’s degree in film studies from Rhode Island College with sights set on a career as a sports documentary editor. Working in retail at Sony right after college, and later another camera store from which she was laid off, unexpectedly jump started a career in photography. “It was never planned for me,” she says, “but looking back at my life, the signs were always there that I was going to be a photographer.” She recalls time spent around fashion with her mother, who studied apparel design at RISD in the 1970s and brought a then three-year-old Taylor to her runway shows. When she got her first point-and-shoot camera, friends often asked her to take photographs of them.

Taylor recalls with pride the most memorable compliment she received from a client getting professional photos taken for the first time since her wedding 20 years prior: “I look like myself in these photos.” Follow along on Instagram @brittanny.taylor