Ari Marcopoulos: Fumes

Photographer Ari Marcopoulos' newest publication takes an in-depth look into the studio process of American artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney. Shot over four years, Fumes depicts the activity within Barney's Long Island City studio from 2011 to 2014. Marcopoulos documented the day-to-day activity in the workspace, from the digging of an Egyptian death chamber to the flooding during Hurricane Irene, to the ongoing preparation for Barney's 2014 film epic River of Fundament: "I got sucked into taking photographs of the people working on the various projects, more and more it felt almost like a performance." The publication is comprised of black-and-white and full-color spreads showing workers transporting, molding and fusing toxic materials, interwoven with an array of intricate pictorial montages, mirroring those of a negative. Marcopoulos captures the human figure at work, in motion, pursuing life in its most ordinary moments in order to create something extraordinary.