Blake Little: Protection

Born and raised in Seattle, WA in 1956, Little studied at the University of Washington and Seattle Central College where he completed his photography degree in 1984. Distinguished by intimate and honest portraits, Little has decades of commercial assignments in the entertainment industry and a short list of his celebrity portraits include Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, Steve Carell, Samuel Jackson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Colin Powell, 50 Cent, Glenn Close, Jane Fonda, Adrien Brody and many others. His corporate clients including Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, and Twentieth Century Fox among others. Little’s portraiture has been featured in The London Times Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Advocate, People Magazine, Time, Los Angeles Magazine.

In January 2020, Little’s most current project Fluid, which documents members of the transgender, non-binary and gender fluid community opened at the University of Victoria Legacy Gallery and will travel in Canada and the US in the coming years. Little’s project, Photographs from the Gay Rodeo debuted with a solo exhibition at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis (2014) and subsequently traveled to museums including The James Museum, St Petersburg, FL (2020); Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK (2019); San Diego State University, San Diego, CA (2016); University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson (2015) and eight others. Little’s solo exhibitions include ARCHETYPE: Portraits by Blake Little, Stonewall Museum, Wilton Manors, FL (2016); Preservation, Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2015); The Company of Men, Western Project, Los Angeles, CA (2011) and others. Selections of his work have been featured in in group exhibitions including Magnetic West, Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA (2020); Concealed: Portraits of LGBT Gun Owners, International Pride Awards, Sau Paulo, Brazil (2020) and International Pride Awards, Amsterdam, Holland (2019) and others. His work has been published in seven monographs: Primary (2021); Work (2017); Photographs from the Gay Rodeo (2016); Preservation (2015); Manifest (2013); The Company of Men (2011); and Dichotomy (1997). Fluid was published in the art journal Public 62: The Gender Diverse Lens Lyzanne, Saskatoon, SK and was selected a winner in American Photos Best Photos of 2020 AP37 annual. Little’s series Concealed: Portraits of LGBT Gun Owners was selected winner in American Photo AP34 and received the 2021 Lens Culture Critic Choice Award.