Women We Love: Olivia Bee

Olivia Bee says she’s accustomed to being mistaken for either a “PA or a very small model” when she turns up to photo shoots. You can see how it might happen. The Brooklyn-based teen, now 18, was a mere 15 years old when the ad agency for Converse got in touch, after seeing her work on Flickr, and asked her to shoot some images for them. And she was only 17 when she did a Fiat 500 campaign.

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Since then, Bee (originally Olivia Bolles) has worked for clients ranging from Hermès to The New York Times – in January she shot Girls star Zosia Mamet for The New York Times Magazine. She’s now seen as one of advertising’s most promising young talents.

There’s nothing like starting young. Bee began taking photos when she was 11 and put them on Twitter. By 15, she had a following and had turned professional. Lying somewhere between art and documentary, the signature style of her work is dreamy, moody shots of teenagers, many of them her friends – the look is cool, but not slit-your-wrists depressing, despite Bee’s affection for heroin-grunge photographer Nan Goldin.

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She might be youthful but she’s no shrinking violet. In a TEDx talk she gave in Amsterdam last year on the subject of following your dreams, she told her audience: “Nothing gets in my way because I don't accept anything getting in my way.” Way to go.