You’ve probably seen them online – and maybe you even had some in your home – cringe-worthy 1980s and ’90s style school portraits and glamour shots.
Those photos are making a bit of a comeback in Saskatchewan thanks to Cheyenna Sapp.
She’s a Cree student majoring in Indigenous Studies at the University of Saskatchewan (U of S), but it’s her sideline of retro-style portraits and glamour photos that she’s becoming known for.
“It was just a funny idea that I had, something that I wanted to try using photoshop since I got a little bit of the skills,” Sapp tells APTN News.
Sapp took a Photoshop course through the U of S and Linked in Learning. She’s now learning a more sophisticated software, Adobe’s Premiere Pro.
“I saw a couple of pictures done–there was the-what was that movie, Napoleon Dynamite? Where they kind of go back in time, and they have like those glamour shots, and I just thought that it was always so cringey that it’s cool now,” Sapp says.
“And so, I wanted to do something like that for a long time but I never had the equipment, I never had any photoshop training or anything like that, just photography training that was it. And then I got all the equipment recently, and did it.”
Sapp posted some of her work on her Facebook page, Shy Sapp Photography, and it caught the eye of her friend, Shawn Cuthand, and others.
“Right away when she posted it, I was super stoked about it, and I was re-sharing it and I was telling her yeah, I definitely wanted to get one done, and I told her I was going to look for a vintage jacket to wear,” Cuthand said. The day of his shoot, Cuthand was wearing a vintage World Wrestling Federation jacket he’d found.
Cuthand is a Cree/Mohawk Comedian and Podcaster who hosts open mic nights in Saskatoon, which Sapp has also performed at.
He says he plans to use the pictures on future posters to promote his comedy nights.
The artistic roots run deep for Sapp—the renowned artist, the late Allen Sapp, is her grandfather.
Her father also creates leather dream catchers and other types of art.
While Sapp doesn’t consider herself a professional photographer, she’s having fun with it.
“I do it mainly as a hobby, but I have taken jobs here and there, so it’s like a hobby that makes me some extra money, right? And, I just think that this kind of stuff makes people really happy and I like to make people happy,” she said.
“It makes people laugh because it’s like funny like to go back in time and think, you know what, I remember the picture I had like that when I was a kid”
