An image maker and visual thinker, Ezra Petronio explores the language of photography as one of the aspects of his multidisciplinary creative practice. The founder of Petronio Associates in 1993, and co-founder, in 1994, of Self Service magazine, Petronio imbues all the media he uses with an unmistakable sharpness, a precision and a dynamic sense of beauty that are his signature.
As a photographer, Ezra Petronio is widely known for his Polaroid portraits, which have currently reached over 4000 in number: an ongoing project that spawns the last three decades and which has been the subject of different exhibitions and publications. Using the fixed focus Land camera Petronio keeps documenting creators both established and new against a white wall. The intimate photographic space, and the lucidity of the gaze piercingly capture the personality of each subject. By doing so, Ezra Petronio has created a unique visual chronicle of our time, at once fostering and recording the mingling of art, fashion, music into a single, multifaceted cultural milieu.
Parallel and independent to the portrait work is Ezra Petronio’s fashion photography, expressed through both editorial and commercial projects of bold and direct visual impact. Interested in personality as he is in clothes as tools of self representation, Ezra Petronio’s defining quality as a fashion photographer is his soulful clarity. There is a graphic edge to the images he produces that oozes the energy of humanity, and that results in images that are both timeless and timely, a document and a proposal. Just like in every aspect of his artistic expression, Ezra Petronio applies the stamp of personal style to his work.
Ezra Petronio’s photographic work has appeared in publications such as Self Service, D magazine, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar France, while commercial clients include Gucci, Saint Laurent, Jimmy Choo, Victoria Beckham, Helmut Lang.