Amy B.’s Color on Mulberry Street
For Amy B., photography often begins with something she cannot quite let go of. It might be a location, a garment, a particular combination of colors, or simply a feeling that starts to suggest a larger world around it. The Dallas based fashion, beauty, and editorial photographer, originally from Dominica, has built her practice around following those instincts and then giving them structure. Through By Amy B., her work moves between fashion, beauty, culture, and visual storytelling, with an eye drawn naturally toward expressive color and environments that contribute as much to an image as the subject standing within them. Amy is intentional about that process. Once an idea takes hold, conversations around wardrobe, casting, beauty, location, and the creative team begin shaping it into something more complete. “Most of the time it starts with a feeling or a visual that I can’t get out of my head,” she explains. “From there, I build.” Her latest editorial, Color on Mulberry Street, offers a vivid introduction to that way of seeing, bringing the expressive prints of Pucci into New York’s Little Italy during New York Fashion Week and allowing fashion, place, personality, and the unpredictability of the city to meet within the same frame.
The initial concept was curated by art director Ronnie B., with particular attention given to making the wardrobe and location speak to one another. Pucci already carried a strong visual identity through its bold patterns and color, but instead of placing those clothes against something restrained, the team chose an environment with an equally distinct personality. “We knew pretty early on we didn’t want Little Italy to feel like a backdrop. It needed to be part of the story.” That meant Amy had to find a balance within spaces already filled with information. Produce, storefronts, restaurant tables, signage, architecture, pedestrians, and the textures of the neighborhood remain present rather than being minimized for the sake of a cleaner fashion photograph. Her compositions give Jazmyn Dorsett enough presence to command the frame while still allowing the viewer’s eye to travel beyond her and discover what is happening around her. The result is an editorial where Dorsett does not appear to have been dropped into Little Italy for a photograph. She moves through it, sits within it, and becomes part of its rhythm.
Color is central to how Amy makes that relationship work, and its importance in her photography extends well beyond this particular series. “I’m a Caribbean gyal, so being drawn to color almost feels like second nature. It’s naturally where my eye goes.” Her Dominican roots continue to inform her relationship with color, warmth, beauty, and culture, even when the subject of an editorial has nothing directly to do with the Caribbean. In one of her favorite images from Color on Mulberry Street, Dorsett stands in front of a fruit market while the colors of the produce surround an already vibrant look. There is a lot competing for attention, but Amy is interested in more than whether those colors simply look good beside one another. She considers where they fall within the frame, how they interact, and how they direct the viewer from one part of the photograph to another. “I love when color feels intentional without feeling forced. I want it to pull you into the photograph, move your eye through the frame, and become part of how you experience the story rather than simply being something pretty to look at.” It is an important distinction in understanding her work. Color is not an addition Amy places onto an image after the story has been established. It is part of how she tells the story in the first place.
That storytelling also depends on allowing a photograph to retain some sense of life beyond what has been carefully planned. Color on Mulberry Street was built intentionally, but New York introduced its own contribution when rain arrived during the shoot. The wet streets began reflecting the colors surrounding them, the atmosphere shifted, and what could have become an inconvenience gave Amy another visual element to work with. “I can plan an editorial down to the smallest detail, but once we step outside, I have to be willing to respond to what is actually happening around me. Sometimes the thing you did not plan is exactly what gives the photographs life.” The same thinking shapes how she works with her subjects. Casting is important because Amy is not searching only for someone who can photograph well in a garment. She wants a model capable of bringing something individual to the concept, and once the camera is up, she leaves enough room for that personality to emerge. Some of the frames she values most come between the poses she initially imagined, through an expression, gesture, or natural movement that could not have been completely directed. “The clothes are important, but I never want the person wearing them to disappear. The model should give the garment another layer of personality, not become a mannequin for it.”
Movement, then, becomes another part of the narrative. Amy wants the viewer to feel that something is happening rather than encountering a sequence of disconnected fashion poses. Walking through Little Italy gave the team opportunities to let each location change the story, while giving Dorsett something real to engage with beyond the camera. “Even when the final image is still, I want there to be a sense that the subject existed in that space before I pressed the shutter and continued moving afterward.” That idea helps define Amy’s larger ambitions as a photographer. She wants her images to feel intentional, cinematic, rich in color, and rooted in storytelling, but she is not interested in arriving at a visual formula and repeating it. “I’m still evolving as a photographer, and I actually value that. I don’t want to reach a point where every project feels predictable simply because it looks like something I have already done.” For Amy, developing a point of view and remaining open to change are not opposing ideas. Her background and instincts can remain present while each new project gives her another opportunity to push them somewhere different.
That desire to evolve is particularly relevant in a moment when viewers encounter more images than they could ever meaningfully absorb. Amy understands that making something beautiful does not automatically make it memorable. “There is so much imagery in front of us every day that beautiful alone isn’t always enough. I want there to be an idea, a feeling, or a detail that makes you stay with the image a little longer, you know?” Color on Mulberry Street finds that detail through the accumulation of everything Amy and her team allowed into the photographs: Pucci’s patterns, Dorsett’s presence, the fruit markets and cafés, the people and architecture of Little Italy, unexpected rain, reflections across the pavement, and Amy’s own instinct for color and composition. By the final image, what matters is not only what was worn but the world the team managed to create around it. “The clothes are what initially pull you into a fashion editorial, but I think the atmosphere is what stays with you. If someone finishes the series feeling like they experienced a tiny piece of New York with us, rather than simply looking at photographs of clothes in New York, then the story did what we wanted it to do.”
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