Seeing faces

Vedere le facce (Seeing faces) is a project developed at the request of a well-known appliance company, which sought to have portraits made of its executives, department heads, marketing directors, and sales managers during a convention at a mountain hotel.

The client’s request was interpreted as an opportunity to experiment with the portrait genre. Each participant was asked to sit for a “live study session” lasting no more than one hour. Over five days, sessions were conducted hourly, with each individual called in turn for their sitting. In total, 56 portraits were created.

The sessions were open to public observation, allowing attendees to watch, comment, and interact, recreating a setting reminiscent of street artists sketching portraits in urban squares. However, in this case, the sitting was imposed as a mandatory corporate activity.

This unique approach to "self-representation," made obligatory for institutional purposes, fostered a situation of mutual understanding mediated by the ritual of portraiture. Sitting still in front of the artist, under the audience’s observation, evoked the ancient practice of static posing, during which the subject becomes the object of visual and interpretative study.