Embroidery on print
62 x 45 cm
Maurizio Anzeri makes his portraits by sewing directly into found vintage photographs. His embroidered patterns garnish the figures like elaborate costumes, but also suggest a psychological aura, as if revealing the personâ€™s thoughts or feelings. The antique appearance of the photographs is often at odds with the sharp lines and silky shimmer of the threads. The combined media gives the effect of a dimension where history and future converge. The image used in Round Midnight is an early 20th century â€˜glamour shotâ€™ that at the time would have been considered titillating for both the girlâ€™s nudity and ethnicity. Anzeriâ€™s delicately stitched veil recasts the figure with an uncomfortable modesty, overlaying a past generationâ€™s cross-cultural anxieties with an allusion to our own.