Tyler Shields Photographs Young Hollywood

by Humberto Guida

Lindsay Lohan and Spencer Falls by Tyler Shields

Every culture functions within parameters, with all of the accepted pathways. But along the edges one can find the subversive outliers who pull the expected boundaries as far apart as possible before they break. To make it from the outside, to rise from nowhere, to shock the system — we love that stuff. So, I find myself sitting in the corner booth at The 101 Coffee Shop, the iconic Hollywood diner where Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau wax philosophic in Swingers, waiting to chat with one of those rebellious pioneers, photographer Tyler Shields.

“I’m not a label. I’m not a fashion. I’m not a celebrity. I’ll buy a Ferrari and blow it up.”

He arrives 45 minutes past our appointment time. When he does, he appears suddenly, whisking through the doors in skinny jeans and a rumpled white T-shirt. Shields makes a beeline for me. He shouldn’t know what I look like, since we’ve only exchanged short e-mails, and there are a couple of other guys sitting by themselves with a notepad next to them, looking all writer-like. But the anticipation on my face must be enough for him to know. He’s one of those intuitive thin-slicers best-selling author Malcom Gladwell glorifies in his books, the kind of person whose mere assumptions are almost always on…