TheArtGorgeous - Issue 7 Fall/Winter 2019

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Self-Portrait
weird laws around the country. The ice cream cone
photo was Alabama’s, where it’s illegal to have an
ice cream cone in your back pocket. Apparently,
hoodlums would pull this trick to lure away horses
on the street.
I Fought the Law wasn’t Locher’s first rodeo, or
even her most visually arresting one (see: 14kt
gold, an FU to male friends broadcasting their
disgust at women’s body hair). But it was the one
that catapulted her to fame, Insta and beyond.
“I used to take it really seriously because for a
long time, it was how I found all of my jobs and
commercial work,” Locher mused about her
Instagram habits. We chatted on the phone for
about an hour one Friday afternoon; gracious and
thoughtful, her voice had a melodious tinge of a
regional accent, a clue of her rural upbringing.
I
t’s summer 2016, and there’s a picture floating around
the digisphere: a clean, tight crop on the backside of an
anonymous girl in white Levis, set against an unobtrusive
violet backdrop. Mind you, this is no #belfie. You might
have scrolled past this now-iconic image on a latenight
Tumblr binge, only to double back and squint at the screen.
Dripping down her back pocket, oozing sticky magenta all over
the pristine shot is an ice cream cone — an all-American ice cream
cone, the kind (I imagine) you would have bought for a dollar at
the general store, back in the day. Strawberry flavor, waffle cone,
sprinkles and all.
This stark, bright, bubblegum aesthetic, a nod to Andy Warhol’s
screen-prints, has become Olivia Locher’s signature. When
the picture went viral, many learned the young photographer’s
name for the first time (or didn’t… rip-offs ran rampant). In
fact, the picture was only one of a series, Locher’s series called
I Fought the Law.
After learning that NYC cops were using zoning laws to target
ethnic and DIY nightclubs around the city (more than three people
weren’t allowed to be dancing without an expensive permit, Locher
told me), she began digging into unjust, outdated or just plain
“Now I feel like it’s not as important, so I have a
lot of fun with it. I use it as a way to connect with
people; sometimes I go about doing model castings
on platforms like Instagram. It’s just a really lovely
way to form a community of people, because
people naturally connect that way. It feels really
organic and effortless, in a way.”
Sudden social media fame, the kind that descended after I Fought
the Law went viral, could go to anyone’s head. But Locher finds
ways to keep her balance among the sudden peaks and valleys of
an artistic career. When she’s not dreaming up new projects or
sharing new work with her 77.3K followers, you might find her
cooking (“it’s very spiritual”), practicing yoga, waking up before
sunrise for some transcendental meditation, or staying up long
past sunset watching movies, typically two a day. (Locher has a
separate account to share her cinephila, @oliviawatchesthetv).
Favorite filmmakers include Jean Cocteau, Alejandro Jodorowsky,
Kenneth Anger and Godard; “I love Jean-Luc, I feel like those
are my really fun, binge-watching movies.” That’s right — while
you were re-watching Sex and the City for the third time, she was
probably unwinding to La Chinoise.
Another notch on Locher’s street cred belt? While studying at the
School of Visual Arts in New York, she worked with — and posed
for — Ryan McGinley. “I was really involved with Ryan McGinley’s
work when I was much younger, and I feel like that was a driving
force for me when I was a young woman making photos.”
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