Capturing Chaos

My biggest fear in prepping for this session was that Maurizio would be adventurous and open and I wouldn’t be ready for it. And that’s exactly what happened. 

A successful studio shoot can be assured by arriving at the space many hours before the subject, but because of a last-minute location change, due to the Covid-19 outbreak, we lost over half of our prep time. Our subject arrived a little early, so we utilized him for our test shots. But the inaudible starting gun had fired and Maurizio was off and running, we both refined our lighting and tried to document the subject’s manic activity at once. He moved from idea to idea rapidly, and when I would request that he repeat an action he took this as an inconvenience, almost an offense.

Past experience has taught me that a fun day doesn’t necessarily translate into great photos – encapsulating the dynamism of a Maurizio Cattelan in a single frame is harder than it looks.

Initially, I just worked to capture as much of the actively as possible, knowing that I could likely piece together something later in post. Then, with a momentary pause in the chaos, I took back control of the session, leading us to the fire escape out back between the old buildings of the Flatiron District. The small workspace restricted the amount of crew we could fit, and having reduced his audience, the performance became manageable, allowing me to capture much of it, and even direct it some.

Much thanks to Irene Opezzo, Paul Croughton, Julie Belcove, and Robb Rice for this great opportunity.