Photographer and Director Michael Piazza was tasked by agency Makeout with creating portraits and interviews of nurses for client ConnectRN. Images were blown-up to 8 feet tall in back-lit towers for an immersive trade-show presentation, along with headphones to listen to the stories of the individual nurses.
Because the final usage of the images was both visual and audio, Michael rented a sound-stage in order to record the nurses interviews, which required a sound recordist in addition to his assistant. He decided to do the interviews first and shoot the portraits immediately afterwards. After warming up with the interview, the nurses stepped onto the seamless set. Michael’s disarming candor made everyone as comfortable in front of the camera as they could be.
The project was shot over 2 days in order to capture portraits of everyone while allotting ample time for their interviews. One standout interview was a nurse who recounted a patient who died during lock-down, so the family couldn’t see their loved one – there wasn’t a dry eye in the studio.
The project turned into a personal one for Michael, who told one of the nurses who works in dementia care how much he appreciated the work she did, as his father had recently passed from Alzheimer’s Disease. The end result was as powerful as it was inspirational. See a collection of some of the portraits below, and for more of Michael’s work, visit his Workbook portfolio.
Represented by Saint Lucy Represents.
