Madeline Tolle AQUA DULCE

Los Angeles-based photographer Madeline Tolle says she tries not to retouch her subjects if she can help it. “As a woman, I feel like there’s enough of that in the world,” she explains.

Tolle, who began her career as a clothing buyer, uses a combination of fashion, portraiture and travel narrative in her imagemaking, balking at traditional notions of beauty. She’s excited by projects that hold opposing concepts: the harsh Vasquez Rocks desert landscape against a model who has “this tough-girl thing going on, but with a certain softness too,” for example.

Shot on 35mm film with a Canon EOS 100 for its “unparalleled color,” this self-produced personal shoot is a nod to femme rockers of the Sixties.

Seduced by West Coast nostalgia, golden light and the idea that she doesn’t have to wait for summer to shoot outdoors, Tolle left Philadelphia for Los Angeles last year. Arriving there without a job or an apartment and only two friends, she made it work by balancing photo styling and shooting architecture and interiors for designers and magazines.

Two years into her career, she’s transitioning into commercial work, hoping to combine her various interests into a unique stylistic space. Her next series centers on vintage denim. “Everyone wears denim. It’s the one piece of clothing that carries stories within it,” she says. “I have a pair of jeans that my grandfather wore that he passed down to my mom—and now I wear them. I don’t think there are other pieces of clothing like that.”

—Lindsay Comstock

Photos © Madeline Tolle madelinetolle.com