Fairytales are Made of this: Infrared NYC by Paolo Pettigiani

Paolo Pettigiani depicted the legendary Central Park in New York through a dreamy pink&blue lens

New York is notoriously known for its delirious concrete, steel and glass cityscape plus the accute endings of its skyscrapers. Paolo Pettigiani decided to enrich this rather mild palette and restore an ethereal, yet invisible part of the city, hence this photographic series.

Pettigiani applied a special filter in front of his lens to block the visible light spectrum and isolate only the invisible one. Taking advantage of the extraordinary impact caused by infrared digital photography, Paolo framed an extensive view of natural elements such as trees and grass, as they provide an ideal percentage of imperceptible colours. As he explains “other elements as sphalt, bricks, water and other surfaces do not reflect the infrared light so they keep the same colours”. On the other hand, “plants that have chlorophyll, such as grass, leaves and trees, strongly reflect this invisible infrared light”.

The Chlorophyll is reflected by plant for the 20% on the green, visible to the human eyes, the other 80% is reflected on the infrared spectrum that we can’t see.

Pettigiani has worked with infrared photography before, shooting landscapes near his hometown, Turin, however this project is special in all aspects. In his own words: “In 2016 I have chosen Central Park because I wanted to capture the unique environment of this Park, that for me is like Paradise Island within the city. Central Park is the place where people go to have a break from the busy routine of the city, or you can just sit there and it seems that you enter in a new pacific world. All my images were taken in Central Park because for this type of infrared photography I need a big and massive piece of nature, with a lot of green elements”.