Mary Beth Barone wearing custom Wiederhoeft.
In 2024, I was contacted by Jake Morris, Mary Beth Barone's close friend and creative partner. He said something along the lines of: "Mary Beth is taping a YouTube special and is going to be wearing this vintage Versace dress that Kate Moss wore, and we think it's gonna look sick with that star filter thingy you do." I was already familiar with her work, as my bestie was a fan of hers and Benito Skinner's. We'd gone to one of their comedy sets at The Bell House. Needless to say, I was down.
In 2025, Overcompensating, created by Benito, premiered on Amazon Prime and became a hit; naturally, Mary Beth was one of the standouts in the show. In 2026, she served as the official red carpet correspondent for the 83rd Annual Golden Globes and created a slew of viral interviews.
Shortly after, I got an invitation to come on as the BTS and key art photographer for her then-upcoming special "Galaxy Brain." Once at the taping, I realized that besides the much larger production crew, the people around Mary Beth were the same people I'd met two years before at the YouTube taping.
The billboards sprung up in Times Square, on Flushing & Morgan in Brooklyn, and in Cali on Beverly & Virgil, Beverly & Sierra Bonita, and Sunset Strip.
Posters were created with the image assets and wheat pasted all over Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Then came The New York Times feature!
Then the Galaxy Brain album came out. Mind you this is when I found out that Thought Provoking (the YouTube special) had an album too! So basically all of Mary Beth’s album materials were shot by me.
Also, now available in vinyl! In this Rolling Stone article, they are hinting at gunning for a Grammy with it. Will the album that I shot the cover for become a Grammy-winning one? Only time will tell. But anyways, buy your copy of the potentially Grammy-winning LP with my artwork adorning its facade. I’m not sponsored to push it by the way.
Then it was the flyers for the Galaxy Brain Ball and the Galaxy Brain Blast Off pool party, bumper stickers, a feature in The Guardian, a feature on betches.com and meme-ish thread by @BookTrib advising on reading material based on “your favorite joke from Galaxy Brain.“ Yeah, so the rollout and the features went crazy and Mary Beath’s team basically said, lets really use these assets, and they sure did.
And the last thing I’m gonna leave you with is proof that I was actually there slaying lewks and shots all at the same time.
Thanks to Sky Vargas who assisted on the day of the shoot and in post.
