All images by Mark De Paola. Used with permission.

“I think what makes good art is to engage people and not dictate to people what to feel,” says Mark De Paola. He’s a multi-disciplined creative, working across many industries, inclucing television, art, and photography. His photography series, 60 seconds, is a detailed look at what makes us human. He created the work over eight months, using long exposures as the core technique of the creation of the images. Through the series, De Paola breaks all the rules of traditional long-exposure photography. He holds the camera in his hands, rather than placing it on a tripod. And he doesn’t ensure his subjects are in focus. The result? A series of photographs that depict the natural flow of being human. It’s an extremely compelling project and we wanted to dive in deeper to understand it.

We caught up with De Paolo, who very kindly spoke to us about the project, revealing his creative process and the psychology behind it.

Phoblographer What was your early inspiration for the 60 seconds series?

MDP: The first image. I picked up my camera in the middle of the night when I saw the very faint scene before me and pushed the button. It flashed “60,” and I didn’t even know what that meant. I had two choices: put the camera down or hold my breath. I held my breath for 60 seconds. The following 60 seconds, the camera buffered for what seemed like forever, and finally, the image before me on the screen was the beginning of the series. Immediately, to me, it was art.

Mark De Paola

“Nudity is intimacy, ease, peace, and an element of voyeurism. It is natural, individually engaging, and beautiful.”

Phoblographer: What’s your relationship with your subject, and how did it impact the way you worked together on the aesthetic of the project?

MDP: Actually, there were several subjects as the project unfolded, all shot in the middle of the night with the ambiance from outside of my New York City studio. As I am a director and photographer working in the fashion/beauty/art sectors, I am fortunate to have many willing collaborators. We have a built-in professional friendship, and these relationships allow a project as intimate as this to come to fruition.

Phoblographer: When I look at the images, I see tenderness, isolation, fatigue, and tranquility; what do you see?

MDP: I see the same, as it, for me, is a depiction of humanity and its complexity. Yes, all of those things and more. It is such a personal series and I feel its success is that it allows the individual to participate in their own way and see and feel it through their own filter and their own lives.For me, I see a vulnerability, humanity, and layers of energy. There is a term in optics called geometric flux (not such a tender phrase), which describes in scientific terms the nature of light energy reflecting off of a subject. To me that is unique to this series.

Phoblographer: What role do you feel nudity plays in this series?

MDP: Nudity is intimacy, ease, peace, and an element of voyeurism. It is natural, individually engaging, and beautiful. The series is not about nudity; it is about evoking an individual emotion of comfort.

Mark De Paola

When you see just through a piece of glass, there is more humanity as it is the way I see. It doesn’t give me any additional information to influence my vision.

Phoblographer: How did you approach shooting? Did you go with the flow, or did you have a strong idea of how each frame would look?

MDP: No actually, I had no idea at all. As you know, each frame was exposed for 60 seconds (the maximum shutter speed for the Leica M240), wide open, with the Leica 50mm Noctilux F1.0. Under these conditions, the subject was barely visible at all. At that time, we do not employ our cone receptors responsible for seeing color. You see only in black and white using the rod receptors. Everything was shot handheld, without focusing, because I did not have enough information to focus. Probably 90% of the images were sh...