129 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three people weren’t allowed to be dancing without an expensive permit, Locher told me), she began digging into unjust, outdated or just plain “Now I feel like it’s not as important, so I have a lot of fun with it.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.” 64
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