On March 17th a small group of us walked up to the roof at 495 Broadway in Soho to shoot 6397's 2nd series of campaign photographs. One of my dreams was continuing - working again with the photographer Ari Marcopoulos.
Our model for this shoot was Coco Baudelle, an actress and filmmaker. Coco is petite, barely 5' 3”, yet she filled each frame of Ari's pictures with a huge and powerful intensity. In Ari's stripped-down way of capturing the deep interiority of his subjects, he brought out her strength, vulnerability, and her sense of humor. It was exciting to witness and an experience that will stay with the 6397 team, to have had the opportunity of observing Ari collaborating with and innately understanding Coco – resulting in images that are both timeless and intimate but without any trace of sentimentality. Ari’s pictures simply capture the moment – unpolished and real.
For me and for 6397, working with Ari Marcopoulos is a dream come true. I did not grow up in New York and yet the city I imagined and always wanted to visit (and which has become my home) was, to a large extent, informed by Ari’s work. His photos showed the movements and feelings of people in a place I did not yet know but which I could still relate to because for me, on an emotional level, what he depicted was not so different from what I was experiencing in my own life from very far away. All of us just living our daily lives and experiencing life as best we could with what little we had. Thank you, David, thank you Coco and thank you Jenny for making this all happen.
Stella
