Matt Giraud : Photographs : People

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At a rally in Portland protesting the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Curtis Reliford mesmerizes the diverse crowd with an impassioned speech about prejudice, outrage, and love. He’s been traveling the country in his “Peace Train” on a “journey of kindness” for the last 16 years. It's past time we all climbed on board.
What do you get when you cross a Stay Home Order, cabin fever, and someone who drapes so elegantly in an ivory crepe empire waist dress? If you guessed “recreate Fuseli’s ‘The Nightmare’ with a stuffed animal and an ancient chihuahua,” boy, how’d you do that? That’s correct!

Note the heirloom-quality gold brooch, which my friend proudly fashioned from cardboard and a few dabs of acrylic paint. She wears it for Buddy (her chihuahua), who while a fussy eater and a little drooly, is more of a love demon than a nightmare, even Photoshopped to three times his size.
Siri, a high school senior, on the road from where she’s been to the adventure, promise – and traffic – of what comes next.
Thanks, Dad.

Part of a series I shot for Safe Routes Partnership, a national non-profit working to improve the health, safety and well-being of kids.
Eloise wants to know what the hell you’re going to do about it.

Well?

I'm sorry, are you still here?
On a break from harvest, under a canopy of ancient cedars, winemaker Kelley Fox tastes visitors through her ethereal Pinot Noir and Pinot Blanc.
Do you remember being as head over heels about anything as much as this?

Yeah, that was transcendent, wasn’t it?
Andrea Nakayama is a functional nutritionist, entrepreneur, and passionate advocate for the healing potential of nutrition at both a personal and clinical level. Warm, gracious, and professional, she was a pleasure to photograph – I can only imagine how great a teacher she must be.
In addition to creating the foundational message strategy for Portland City Councilor Nick Fish’s bid for re-election, I shot the initial round of images for the campaign, including this portrait. Nick’s life-long commitment to public service is pretty inspiring, and I think the calm resolve that drives him comes through powerfully in this shot.

So how'd he do? Despite a strong challenger, Nick earned a resounding 61.8% of the vote in the primary, well past the 50% threshold that would have forced a runoff in November. I’m really proud to have been part of the team that helped get him there.
Birds of a feather: Violet and the peacock.

What do you think she sees?
The actor Amelia Hillery, unfurled on a bed of brittle leaves as the sun sets on an autumn afternoon.
Waiting for the the 2017 solar eclipse from a farm on Grand Island, Oregon. Keen observers may recognize Don Yerian, the draft horse whisperer in other images I've shot, on whom Devo Kraftwerk eclipse glasses look decidedly out of place.
Radio and podcast producer Susan Davis is listening. Always listening.
Susan Davis, podcasting coach, producer... and icon! As you can probably tell from this image, yeah, this was a really fun shoot. The passion and intensity @cutmymic brings to her work was crystal clear throughout the session, but buoying it was a healthy goofiness and willingness to experiment that must make collaborating with her on a podcast (if not a photo shoot) incredibly rewarding. I mean, who would you rather make something with?
The audio and the ecstasy: one last shot from my portrait session with Susan Davis, podcast guru, public radio producer, and champion of the human story. I asked her to close her eyes, try to forget I was there, and imagine she was listening to something beautiful and let it take her somewhere else. Maybe it was a piece of music, but more likely, I'll bet it was a simple, quintessentially human moment, a heartbeat or signal in all the noise of our lives. And maybe it was *only* a moment, maybe just the telling pause in someone's voice that clears your attention of any other audio as you now are listening, truly listening, to nothing else, the tightening timbre as they edge toward something deeply felt, a memory of an experience that changed things for them forever, the noble struggle for control before emotion crests the dam and their voice catches. That moment of... connection, with another human being. The kind of audio that is her life's work, in other words. This is where it took her
Strike: a poster I designed for International Women's Day, featuring the actor and director Amelia
A portrait of Amelia Hillery, a talented young actor preparing for the role of Juliet in an unconventional staging of Romeo and Juliet.
Interior designer Kara Brennan lounges in the Sinatra suite, Orbit In!, Palm Springs, California
Warehouses, shoulder to shoulder like a line up, fade into oblivion beyond the last faltering streetlight’s gaze. The steel padlock seizes, numb as your fingers working the reluctant key. Inside, the door’s weary creak describes a vast space you cannot see. The dead air is scented with stillness – of power cable long cooled, of bearing grease muffled with dust – distant echoes of a human hand long quiet.

Your eyes fumble in the darkness, searching for scale and substance, and after a moment, pallid walls begin to lift out of the gloom, leaving behind a grim council of breakers brooding their latent might.

And something else: wefted through the shadows, a single thread of purpose, and just before you understand that it is perfume, it has wrapped itself around your will and the lights come on.
This old guy has been hanging on the wall since Annabeth’s now-husband gave it to her in lieu of earrings in the early days of their courtship (worked like a charm, obviously!). It seemed to both of us the perfect final shot of the session: the end of one thing that really means the beginning of another.
The incredible flying artist George Wehn.
Nancy Forrester, artist, environmental activist, wedding officiant, savior of parrots and the vanishing face of a more bohemian Key West – here with an affectionate blue macaw.
Many Oregon winemakers believe the most complex and beautiful Pinot Noir comes when the fruit just barely ripens before winter storms sweep the vines with dilution. Here, the last of his fruit safely in fermenter, Cameron's John Paul calmly watches those storms roll in.
This is from a visual and communications strategy I designed for the Alice Awards, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance's annual fundraiser and celebration of bike heroes. To drive home the point that investing in bike safety programs for kids inevitably results in adults who ride, we shot a series of adult bikers holding shots of them as younger riders.
I know you are but what am I?
The firebrand politician Jefferson Smith at the 2011 Alice Awards
A client of REACH and what she saved for through their innovative YouthSave program
A small, thoughtful gesture at the base of the largest brass Buddha in the world at Tōdai-ji temple in Nara, Japan.
Hiroshima leur amour. A hipster couple from as far away from 1945 as you can get strolls Hiroshima Peace Park, Japan, epicenter of the atom bomb devastation during World War II
The joyous bride
Baby girl
Oregon Gothic