Friday, April 3, 2009

ADRIAN PANARO: Out My Back Door

Out My Back Door #5. Photograph (c) Adrian Panaro/All Rights Reserved

"My family and I were living in a loft three blocks south of the World Trade Center, at Trinity Place and Rector Street, and witnessed the first plane hitting the North tower from our six year old's school PS 234, at Greenwich and Chambers Streets. We weren't permitted to go home for about 6 weeks and when public policy dictated it was safe, our eyes and noses told us otherwise. We hoped things would improve, but in the end we decided to move out to New Mexico. "

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PHOTOGRAPHER ADRIAN PANARO now divides his time between New York and New Mexico. The destruction on 9/11 rendered his downtown residence/studio, like the rest of the neighborhood, uninhabitable and in 2002 he and his wife Tina moved their family to New Mexico.

Panaro began his professional career in New York City in the 1970's. After traveling extensively throughout Afghanistan, India and Nepal and attaining his undergraduate degree in Anthropology, he began working for Richard Avedon. During his 3 years with Avedon, he learned the fine points of studio lighting, participated in the preparation for and mounting of Richard Avedon's major retrospective Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while also serving for a time as studio manager. Panaro next worked with fashion photographer Bill King in Paris and New York.

When Adrian branched out on his own as a free-lance editorial and advertising photographer, his work was published in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Details Magazine, and various international publications. Those early portraits of artists, writers and musicians included everyone from photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, artist Andy Warhol, to the legendary rock and roller Chuck Berry.


Since moving to New Mexico, his work has expanded, and taken him into a much different direction. "Due to my being an expatriate and from the experience of 9/11, I found myself drawn back to the original impetus that led me into photography as a medium of self expression."

May 1st through May 30, Group Exhibition:
Walter Randel Gallery, 287 10th Avenue, NY, NY.
http://www.wrgallery.com


Adrian Panaro: http://www.adrianpanarophotography.com

ArtInfo: Robert Mapplethorp, Silver Gelatin Print, 10 x 10 inches

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