Costumes: Solid Colors

Costumes are integral to Dario Zucchi’s photographic strategy. Solidly colored outfits lend themselves to parallels with large color designs. At times Zucchi selects a simply dressed figure in green or red to engage with a similar color composition (figs. 193, 374, and 375). In other examples of his work someone wearing solid clothes may be connected to a single tone in a multi-colored painted background (fig. 052). In some instances Zucchi chooses a visitor with an outfit that matches two solid colors in a design (figs. 051 and 272). The woman standing before the Jim Dine painting has not only two analogous colors but the visual pun is emphasized by her parallel pose to the robe featured in the artwork (fig. 179). The posture also evokes an attitude of triumph or defiance. In Zucchi’s work a pose also can suggest a state of mind that a viewer might normally infer from a facial expression. The man positioned in front of the Morris Louis painting has his hands at his sides in what may be interpreted as a resigned attitude (fig. 427). 

One of Zucchi’s cleverest juxtapositions is that of a woman attired in yellow in front of a large yellow construction by Carmen Herrera (fig. 387). The color itself would have been sufficient to attract the artist’s lens, but the inclusion of the two eyes decorating the back of the garment adds wit to the photograph. 

Another of Zucchi’s approaches is to choose an appropriately dressed person, in correct scale, to illusionistically interact with figures and environment in the background. In one of the artist’s images a female museum visitor appears to step on to the pavement in a Paul Chan photograph (fig. 064). Perhaps the young woman, dressed in a black top and blue jeans, is gazing at the African-American man wearing a blue shirt and black shorts.  Or perhaps she has stopped to read the sign that he is holding. In either event Zucchi creates the illusion that the onlooker has been absorbed into the fictive space of the photograph. With similar intent, Zucchi places a standing figure in a white jacket in front of a painting by Julio Larraz (fig. 066). The young man, seen from behind, appears ready to join a bearded man in a boat, perhaps in front of the whale tank of an aquarium.  As viewers we accept the fiction of these figures’ interaction as we marvel at Zucchi’s ingenuity.