Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “Everywhere but Here Series” series
By Otis Chatzistefanou, December 20, Berlin 2014
“It’s all around you” is but one of the projects that photographer Joseph Desler Costa publishes in various contexts, including limited edition photobooks bearing the Silent Face Projects press imprint, which he founded.
The dynamic poetry of his pictures is reminiscent of other masters of elliptically narrative imagery, such as Guy Bourdin or Helmut Newton, but the comparisons stop there, as Costa’s work suspends specific interpretations in pictorial sequences that are abstract enough to transcend their iconic power, avoiding to dictate any predetermined manipulations of viewer suggestibility via explicit storylines. Costa’s scenarios remain inconclusive, sexuality is present but its power is felt through subconscious insinuation instead than direct confrontation, while the lushness of his lighting schemes and the considered manner of his compositions confront the dark undertones from a studied distance, as if we are watching evidence of elaborate re-enactments instead of witness reports.
Click below to view a gallery of “It’s all around you”, a series of photographs by Joseph Desler Costa
Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
Cover image: Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
Joseph Desler Costa lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and Florence, Italy. He studied at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Television EICTV (Cuba) and ICP Bard College (New York). Costa’s photographs, films and collages question surface, color and object via a hyper-stylized hybrid of analogue, digital and artificial elements. Works have been exhibited at The International Center of Photography (New York), FUA (Florence), Sala de Arte Moderna (Santiago, Chile) as well as appearing in the New York Times Magazine, Visual Studies Workshop Journal, Big Magazine and Musee Magazine. Costa is the founding member of Silent Face Projects.
Cover image: Photograph by Joseph Desler Costa, from the “It’s all around you” series
The Berlin Agenda 