New York City based photographer Maria Antonietta Mameli has been working on a project called Human Observations . Mameli photographs passerbys from the vantage point of the Manhattan Bridge in New York City. The figures are seen in scale from her perspective, and she completely removes the surroundings. She follows the individuals as they go about their daily lives, but isolates them at the center of each composition. In Long Take #1 she follows an old woman as she makes her way towards a garbage can to examine the contents. The series shows Mameli’s attention to her subjects, and the detail in their actions as they go about their daily lives, unaware of the attention by the artist.
Mameli describes her work in the following statement: ”By cutting everything off, I remove every possible element of distraction to focus on reality and surrounding emotional life through a telescope, so that space and time become non-existent. By reducing the subjects to minimal size, I force the viewer to get closer to my work not only physically, but also emotionally. I created my aesthetic space where the facets of human condition are under the sharp scrutiny of my lenses.”
Mameli’s Human Observations - Long Takes is on view at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York City through June 4.
