Jean Pagliuso: The Raptor Suite: seven owls & The Poultry Suite: large-scale prints

Jean Pagliuso’s photographs of owls and poultry integrate surprising subjects with her experience over thirty years as a noted fashion and formal portrait photographer. After a successful career as a commercial photographer, Jean Pagliuso turned her attention in the 1990s to photographing architectural monuments and ritual sites around the world. Several years ago, she returned to working in the studio setting, composing dramatic formal portraits of poultry that breeders brought to her New York City studio. Her interest in photographing fowl developed out of her exploration of childhood memories of her late father’s lifelong hobby of raising chickens in Glendale, California.

The tour de force series of head shots and life size images of white, black and variegated plumed chickens printed on thin, Thai paper washed with hand-painted silver emulsion comprised Pagliuso’s 2006 exhibition at The Drawing Room. For this exhibition, Pagliuso employed the same printing technique for seven portraits of owls used in the other series she created contemporaneously, The Raptor Suite. These are presented with three new poultry subjects printed as large-scale silver gelatin prints measuring 3 feet tall.

See below for full press release and selected works.