For an art photographer yearning to do compelling portraits, but bereft of the skills to charm, cajole and coax subjects to reveal themselves to his camera, these deeply intimate ‘portraits’ broadcast their purest selves in reverie, portraits in the truest sense, but unprecedented in their originality and graphic beauty. Another of Massaia’s ‘explorations of uncharted places’ by exploring the uncharted close at hand! This took the form of daily expeditions to Central Park’s Sheep Meadow, wearing a ‘cloak of invisibility’ by hiding in plain sight to find the impossible to pose pose. These human sculptures appear more otherworldly than any Amazon shaman or New Guinean headhunter from the pages of Salgado’s ‘Genesis’. It’s bewildering to learn these unposed figures lying in the Sheep Meadow of NYC’s Central Park, turned verticality from the horizontal plane they were taken in, are entirely unaware of the artist’s unerring gaze! It makes them beyond compelling as one gets lost in the elegantly rendered details down to the second hands of the subject’s watch, the strands of blond hair cascading gracefully off a back, or the chiaroscuro folds of a white pressed shirt. The ‘portraits” of the subjects in Deep In A Dream/Sheep Meadow- Vertical Abstracts are the antithesis of a snapshot. The perfection of figures that are at once eerily familiar and something never before seen. Some look as if they were taken from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, others appear as gorgeous ballet lifts and moves, frozen and transformed into sinuous sculptural forms.
View the Portfolio Below:
