A24'S YOGURT SHOP MURDERS LANDS TWO EMMY NODS

The same photographer who shot Taylor Swift standing in a foggy forest for the Folklore album cover just spent weeks documenting the streets of her hometown for a documentary about four unsolved murders. Beth Garrabrant, Austin based and Swift's go to image maker since 2020, photographed local scenes of the city during filming of The Yogurt Shop Murders, the HBO Max and A24 documentary series that just picked up two Emmy nominations.

The overlap says something about how small the pool of trusted visual storytellers actually is once a project needs someone who can make a place feel lived in rather than staged.

Four Women. One Yogurt Shop. 1991.

The Yogurt Shop Murders investigates the killing of four young women, Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, inside a North Austin frozen yogurt shop on December 6, 1991. The case sat unsolved for over three decades before HBO Max and A24 built a series around it, directed by Margaret Brown. The show premiered in August 2025, and about a month later, Austin police announced they had finally identified the culprit through DNA and ballistics testing: Robert Eugene Brashers, a serial killer who had already been dead since 1999. A24 built its reputation on films like Tony, and a cold case documentary with an active police investigation running underneath production is a different kind of bet entirely.

Beth Garrabrant Photographed Her Own City for This One

Garrabrant is Austin based, which means the local scenes she shot during filming were not a location scout's version of Texas, they were her own streets. She built her reputation as Taylor Swift's photographer starting with Folklore in 2020, carrying through Evermore, Red Taylor's Version, Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department, work built on the same instinct this documentary needed: making a real place read as more than a backdrop. Album photography and true crime documentary photography rarely draw from the same skill set on paper, one sells a mood, the other has to earn trust with a community still living inside a decades old tragedy, but both jobs come down to the same test: does the place on camera feel true to the person who actually lives there.

The Killer Was Already Dead When Police Named Him

Police closing a thirty four year old case a month after a documentary aired is the kind of twist a scripted show would get accused of inventing. HBO Max and Brown responded by producing a fifth episode, The End of Wondering, to cover the identification directly rather than let the series end on the open question its first four episodes had been built around. Most true crime series either land after a case closes or stay open ended by necessity. This one had to rebuild its final act in real time, mid rollout, because the news broke faster than the release calendar.

A24 Keeps Picking True Crime Over Its Own A24 Look

This is not A24 leaning on its usual arthouse aesthetic. The studio's recent slate ranges from Dominic Sessa's Anthony Bourdain performance to horror revivals like Backrooms built from creepypasta internet lore. A true crime documentary about a cold Texas case sits outside both lanes, and the two Emmy nominations, Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series for Brown and Outstanding Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program for DP Christopher LaMarca, argue the studio's range is wider than its house style suggests. A24 spent a decade being the shorthand for a specific look: muted color grading, an ambiguous final scene, a certain kind of ending that leaves a viewer unsettled on purpose rather than resolved. A documentary built around DNA evidence and a police press conference does not have room for that house style, and the studio let the real case dictate the form instead of forcing its aesthetic onto it.

Early, Not Overrated

This is early, not overrated. A24's documentary slate has been the quiet part of its output next to the theatrical releases that get the headlines, and two Emmy nominations for a true crime series nobody expected to close its own case mid season is the kind of signal that gets buried under a bigger opening weekend somewhere else. The number worth watching in September is not the ratings. It is whether Brown and LaMarca actually win, because that is what tells A24's next documentary pitch whether prestige TV is now a real second lane or a one season accident.