José Picayo in New York

12/24/2018

GERRI (SAILOR), 1992 © José Picayo

Originally from Cuba, José Picayo moved with his family to Puerto Rico as a child and then, in the early 1980s, to New York City to study photography at Parsons School of Design. Before long, he was shooting fashion and portraiture for the city’s most prestigious magazines: Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Rolling Stone. But all the while, Picayo was also working on his own Polaroid art projects, and now a quarter-century of highlights from these can be admired at Robin Rice Gallery, in the West Village of his adopted hometown. ‘Digital is so overpoweringly real,’ Picayo says, explaining his preference for more traditional techniques, ‘[analogue] photography is more magical to me’; and his great skill is his ability to take ordinary subjects and make them, through his use of muted colour palettes and all kinds of clever exposures and solarisations, appear magical and ethereal.

More information at: http://robinricegallery.com/currentexhibition/index.shtmlRobin Rice Gallery