Baby Portraits By Evan Kafka

One of Kafka’s most recent high-profile job has been a campaign for the Broadway musical Next to Normal. His intense headshot enlargements, ten feet tall each, fill the six doors of the Booth Theater with the six characters in the play. Tourists are often seen outside taking photographs of Kafka’s photographs. Similarly, the Brooklyn Academy of Music has plastered New York City with black and white reproductions of his headshots for As You Like It and The Tempest, directed by Sam Mendes. “Both of those jobs were totally lit with Profoto gear,” says Kafka.
“For the past year I’ve been focusing on really tight headshots, trying to make them as intense as I can. I want to bring out the character of the subject, the landscape of the face. I’ve always been interested in this kind of shot. I was doing them with my Mamiya RZ on film for years, but I felt I could only get so far. With the advent of digitial and new lighting techniques, I feel I’ve finally found a way to arrive at something I’m interested in. I’m really concentrating on the eyes, for one thing. There’s a lot of catch lights, a lot of texture in the eyes, and it’s all done through the lighting. My main light for these kinds of shots is a Profoto Softlight Reflector. That’s my favorite key light at the moment.”