For more than 40 years, the revered Argentinean fine art photographer, Aldo Sessa, has become one of the world’s most acclaimed on the international stage, with works currently displayed in collections at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá, Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires, Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C, NASA’s Lyndon Johnson Space Center in Houston, and at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among numerous other museums and private collections throughout The Americas and Europe.
A new virtual exhibit showing Aldo’s exclusive works from the book Seances and Ghosts, authored by the renowned American science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury, is now being shown by the Aston Martin Residences Art Gallery for the first time. The 1989 collaboration between Sessa and Bradbury on Seances and Ghosts catapulted Sessa’s notoriety from the museum world to the publishing business, and became one of Sessa’s most publicized projects at the height of his career.
“Photography is the closest thing there is to magic,” says Sessa. “To think that you just click, and now the image is sitting on the film’s emulsion, or inside the digital camera, as a trapped picture that is floating there, brings something unexpected, something no one else saw but you. Being able to visualize and give perspective to it and take it to a certain scale, from something that was only one inch, to now two yards, from an original picture that no one but you will know.”
Sessa has also created an original photographic interpretation for the Aston Martin Residences’ permanent collection, entitled Cosmic Reflection, inspired by the residences’ sail-shaped architecture and immense towering height. The image portrays the 66-storey building illuminated under the moon against an incessant galaxy of stars.
Reflecting on this exclusive work, Sessa says: “In my artistic life, space has always occupied a privileged place in my mind. When working on this piece for Aston Martin Residences, I had a vision related to the immensity of space and infinite magnetism of the moon and the stars that illuminate it. The magnificent architectural presence of the building is enhanced by the blue diaphony of its crystals that merge in this magical night panorama.”
As a young boy, Aldo Sessa studied painting and drawing at the De Ridder Atelier and worked at his father’s printing press in Argentina. As Sessa’s artistic career progressed, his oeuvre grew to include graphic design, graphic arts, cinematography, and photography, with his photography eventually taking center-stage. Sessa’s work has since appeared in over 200 exhibitions worldwide.
In 1976 he held his first solo show at the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires, followed by two additional shows in 1977 and 1978 at the same institution. His first publishing collaboration came in 1979, when Sessa illustrated the book The Ghosts of Forever with essays and poems by one of the most celebrated 20th-century authors and screenwriters, Ray Bradbury, that was published by Rizzoli International in the U.S. In 1989, Sessa was honored with the first retrospective exhibition of a living Argentine artist at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires. Gaining recognition and highlighting photography as a fine art form, Sessa was soon after Named Honorary Member of the Argentine Federation of Photography in Buenos Aires and Named a Member of the National Academy of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires in 1991.
In 1980, his painting Humorum was selected for the collection in the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C, and in 1976, the Argentine Government selected his triptych Before the Beginning as a gift to the U.S. Government to commemorate the Bicentennial Celebration of Independence. This work is still displayed at the Lyndon Johnson Space Center by NASA in Houston, Texas.
Sessa participated in his first group exhibition in 1952, and in 1958 he began working as freelance photographer for La Nación newspaper in Buenos Aires. After studying cinematography in Hollywood, he worked as an illustrator and freelance photographer for La Gaceta newspaper in Tucumán, and he signed his first contract as an artist with the Bonino Gallery in 1972. In 1976 Sessa illustrated Cosmogonies, a book with poems by Jorge Luis Borges. He has since published more than 40 art books, and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; Museum of Modern Art, Bogotá, Colombia; Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires, Argentina; National Academy of Fine Arts Collection, Buenos Aires, Argentina; National Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago, Chile; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, and the International Center of Photography, New York, NY. Sessa was named an Illustrious Citizen of Buenos Aires and a Member of the National Academy of Fine Arts. His photographs are housed in private collections and museums worldwide.
Sessa approaches all of his image-making with a passion, to illuminate the subject from his unique perspective and convey his fascination with light and shadow. Always carrying a camera, Aldo Sessa finds much of his inspiration in New York City and Buenos Aires, allowing his strong connection to each city to lead him to uncover extraordinary observations.
“I always try to have my camera ready.,” states Sessa. “If I change my path and the light changes, I adjust the diaphragm, even if I haven’t found what I want to photograph.”
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Aldo Sessa’s Seances and Ghosts exhibit can be viewed from Thursday, November 23 at the Aston Martin Residences immersive 3D virtual gallery, at https://astonmartinresidences.github.io/virtualtour/.
