Interview: Going Behind the Lens with Photographer Annalie Bouchard

“I want all of the grime—like all of the dirt, and the beer, and everything. That’s what I want to come through, I think, most of all.”

NYC-based photographer Annalie Bouchard has always had an eye for the visual. The multi-disciplinary artist gravitates towards all different types of mediums, from collages to printmaking to digital illustration. In fact, photography is Bouchard’s most recent medium, and only became a serious endeavor just before the pandemic. Back in 2017, Bouchard found themself with a disposable camera or a Russian Lomography camera in front of the packed crowds in New York City basement shows. Since then, Bouchard has documented house show mosh pits to arena photo pits, capturing performances by bands like Surfbort and Christeene, and touring with Kings of Leon in 2021.

It wasn’t long after taking a camera to house shows and shooting DIY gigs that a friend asked them to join Kings of Leon on tour as a photographer at the spur of the moment, setting them in a new direction in their career. “I was definitely baptized by fire a little bit,” Bouchard laughs.

Coming from a photography-heavy family, Bouchard was never a stranger to the lens, recounting, “I pretty much always had a camera in my hand at some point.” They remember their mom always behind the lens herself and handing them a camera from a young age.

Hailing from basement punk and hardcore shows, Bouchard says that the DIY ethos found there strongly influences their approach to documenting performances.

“I am super influenced by other people who are around me doing the exact same thing in their own really unique and super awesome ways,” Bouchard says. “Those types of people are just what keeps the energy up, what keeps the shows going. They’re all people who are also making their own music and showing up for their friends. It’s really just awesome to be like a part of this huge network of really awesome people who are just supporting each other creatively.”

Bouchard’s work artfully captures the essence of a performance by bringing forward the minute and fierce details that most people would miss in the whirlwind of punk or hardcore shows. They bring out the texture and noise from the stage and the crowd through the veins on a guitarist’s hands, beads of sweat on a singer’s forehead, or the ripped fishnets of someone in the crowd.

“It’s little remnants, even in a photo with no people in it, where you just have surfaces and textures. It just makes me assemble the series of photos that go together in my mind. You’ve got the people thing happening, but then you’ve also got the background noise, and I’m just as interested in that.”

An artist at heart, Bouchard has adopted a monochromatic approach to their work as a deliberate aesthetic.

“Sometimes the limitation is actually the part that makes you more creative in it,” Bouchard says. With the absence of color, Bouchard prefers to hone in on directing the composition of their photos, emphasizing texture, or positioning the perfect silhouette. With a keen perceptiveness, Bouchard captures the movement and energy of a concert, finding the perfect spots to snap emblematic shots like that of the crowd grabbing hold of each other in the pit or a fan pressing their face into the stomach of the vocalist.

“I feel like half the time, it’s being aware of your surroundings in a way that’s half in an artistic sense, and a half just for survival,” Bouchard laughs. “I’m always just looking in 10 directions at once, partially out of necessity, but also just because sometimes you turn in a weird direction away from what you’re supposed to be looking at and then you actually capture more interesting things.”

With each photograph, Bouchard hopes their work captures the band’s spirit or introduces someone else to their next favorite band. “I’m not just shooting anything. It’s things that I genuinely like and want other people to know about. I just want you to get as close as you can to the experience of being there.”

Keep up with Bouchard by following them on Instagram.

All photos courtesy of Annalie Bouchard