For the latest edition of New York Magazine’s Out of the Box, Erik Madigan Heck (MFA Photography 2009) created a series of photographs titled “Without a Face,” focusing on the back of the garments, erasing the face, and offering a different perspective on the standard fashion shoot.

ERIK MADIGAN HECK, 2013

“So much of what we see today is concerned with the face — with celebrity, with the politics of a person and their endorsement,” Heck told the Cut. “I wanted to refocus our attention on the most basic elements of what I believe fashion and art are truly concerned with — color, form, texture, and seeing into a space beyond ourselves. For me, fashion is merely another mode to understand our relationship with beauty’s transcendent qualities.”

ERIK MADIGAN HECK, 2013

The fourteen images he created for the Cut are accompanied by a beautiful short film that showcases the relationship between the artist’s own work and his personal connection to the history of painting. The film is directed by John Carlucci and was produced in association with B2Pro and Nomenus Quarterly. Watch the image below, then see the entire photographic series here. 

https://vimeo.com/74659765