Portraits in the presence of Marina Abramovic

Marco Anelli's powerful portraits of the sitters in the historic 2010 Marina Abramovic's performance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York are now collected in their entirety in the monograph: Portraits in the Presence of Marina Abramovic. The centerpiece of The Artist is Present, the retrospective of this pioneer of performance art, was Abramovic herself who sat silently in the museum's atrium inviting visitors to take a seat across from her for as long as they chose. She sat every day for the run of the show--716 hours and 30 minutes-- and faced over 1500 people, whose involvement completed the work. Photographer Anelli, who was present during the whole time of the performance, took portraits of all the visitors capturing the most intense moments of their engagement with the artist. The people in the portraits represent the broad spectrum of human feelings and emotions in a wide variety of different ages, social groups, and backgrounds, and they include regular museum visitors and tourists, as well as artists and fi lm stars like Lou Reed, Sharon Stone, Patti Smith, Bjork, James Franco and others. Anelli is not engaging the sitters or Abramovic directly, his meta-performance as gathered in Portraits in the Presence of Marina Abramovic is a compelling testament to the power of the gaze and our connection to one another.