“Leaked photos from heaven” reads the Instagram bio of Taryn Segal, a New York City-based photographer whose subjects seem to inhabit their own world—one indubitably cooler than ours. Private moments and spaces are her specialty: a father taking his daughter out on Halloween night, a sleepover between friends, an exclusive party. Whether an ordinary Subway-goer or a ubiquitous supermodel, Segal imbues each subject with an innate, celestial coolness. Or perhaps it is this very coolness that led her to them in the first place.

Segal’s photographs have appeared in real life, inside the NYC subway (a collaboration with Meta and MTA), beside cultural reporting in publications such as Byline, Cultured Magazine, Dazed, GQ, i-D, and Interview Magazine, and this summer, in Snow In July, a 44-page zine published by Pomegranate Press.

In her photographs, Segal peeks into the most specific, strange, even secret corners of humanity, bathing them in vivid, technicolor film for anyone to see. A quick scroll through her work will reveal the fighters in a Japanese female wrestling league, the bow-clad audience at a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader audition, the contestants in Las Vegas’ Miss Rapunzel Long Hair Contest, and the inner workings of a taxidermist (Amber Maykut), to name a few. Though esoteric, it is generally understood that these settings are not private for a lack of inclusivity, but rather for their specificity of purpose and intimacy of assembly.

Her subjects share a cursory sense of passion—for their craft, for creativity, for life—that serves as the bonding element across her eclectic portfolio. Segal has shot looksmaxxer Clavicular (Braden Eric Peters), Gen-Z model Alex Consani, influencer-turned-comedian Veronika Slowikowska, indie darling Malcolm Todd, and internet provocateur Ivy Wolk, among many others. Ranging from the clandestine to the coveted to the controversial, Segal’s subjects, once captured by her creative process, are no longer merely oddities or possessions of the zeitgeist but sparking, feeling people with renewed humanity and meaning.

In Snow In July, Segal examines quotidian, in-between moments: colorful cereal balanced in the divot of a stomach, held hands at a crosswalk, hair tangled mid kiss. With nods to mortality such as reserved graveyard scenes and upturned taxidermied creatures, the zine leaves the impression that beauty and joy and life are fleeting, and that maybe it is incumbent on us to find meaning along the way.

Granting access to the literally and spiritually exclusive, her photographs unearth universality in the obscure and individuality in the mainstream, so that if our lives truly do consist of fleeting moments, it is a blessing for Segal to capture any one of them.