Cities According to Photographer Rodolfo Michel

Though photographer, Rodolfo Michel, is considered a commercial fashion photographer professionally, his artistic vision goes well beyond print ads.  He is drawn to beauty in its various forms. Rodolfo Michel is especially intrinsically drawn to the beauty of architecture and how it lives in a city.

While many photographers focus on cityscapes and universally recognizable buildings and bridges, Rodolfo Michel takes a different approach to discovery, digging into the city and instead focusing on its unique factors.  He thoughtfully searches for its artistic character, finding the architectural lines that define the city.  Rodolfo Michel finds images that personify the space they inhabit. 

For example, Rodolfo Michel photographed a series of benches that, like the people who sit upon them, display a unique sort of character.  Some seem lonely and isolated, while others seem inviting and warm.  In Rodolfo Michel’s photographs, the benches take on the character of that certain space of the city.  The benches represent how a unified purpose can be addressed so differently, much like us, the humans that sit upon them.   

Through exploring and documenting the artistic character of the cities, Rodolfo Michel discovers the connections between form and function, the relationship between human and object. In this way, Rodolfo Michel’s photographs encapsulate a piece of a city’s soul.

In a series of postcards, Rodolfo Michel finds overlooked beauty in various by altering perception through his lens.  His photographs could, on the one hand, be completely personal and, on the other, a brand new experience.  Rodolfo Michel then uses black and white to create contrast and depth. 

In his photographs of cities, Rodolfo Michel creates a juxtaposition of the tangible and intangible.  A city in its majestic form feels to us inhabitants as if we are both connected to and disconnected from it.  And, as Rodolfo Michel shows us, there’s beauty in it all.