By Daniel Fabiani
Hexed and Vexed>are on a mission to take over the New York City photography scene one distorted image at a time.
They say that they don’t seek out their subjects, but let their subjects just come to them.
They arm themselves with digital cameras, ornate clothing and the passion to capture raw nightlife and urban decay.
From decadent nightclubs to gaudy thoroughfares throughout the city, Hexed and Vexed see your average individual or crumbling landscape of any shape or age, and find something special about it with an unsuspecting click of their camera.
They freeze moments in time – the way teeth glimmer at night, the drunken dance moves of nightclub patrons, and everything in between.
The pair plays with shutter speeds to make light spiral in their photos, they don’t ask for poses, and they shoot in almost all black and white.
“Our photos mimic absurdness, and that’s not a thing you can just catch. We love the editing process, it makes the photos more personal,” says John Zinonos, the Hexed of Hexed and Vexed.
Their name is well known in the underground, in the obscure New York City club scene, and by many young people interested in obscure photos.
“People say, ‘Oh look, it’s Hexed and Vexed.’ It’s like we don’t have names anymore, just Hexed and Vexed,” says Micaela Mclucas, the Vexed of Hexed and Vexed.
Historically, art photography has been created on film and developed in dark rooms. Hexed and Vexed certainly do not use such a process, living in the digital age.
When the pair sits back and looks at the photos that they took the night before, they look for subtle things to obscure, such as blurring a simple line or changing hue to reflect the feelings of the photo.
“Film is old and time based. We would like to break that tradition,” says Mclucas.
Mclucas, 22 and Zinonos, 21, are young to be juggernauts with their art, because the scene is thirsty for new talented youth. Their tastes draw on a mixture of their personalities and traditional training from their college educations.
Zinonos, who grew up in Queens, tends to be dark, while Mclucas, who has family in Argentina and Los Angeles, tends to be whimsical.
The two instantly hit it off after they met at a party in Manhattan, wowing one another after a long, distorted conversation about each other’s work.
“We came together as two tastes who instantly got one another. And New York has influenced that as well since it is a dark and whimsical place to live,” said Mclucas at a recent interview in a SoHo espresso bar.
Though Hexed and Vexed see traditional photography as old and inflexible, many photographers stick to the traditional basics.
By spring Hexed and Vexed are planning to unveil their first formal showing. Zinonos is a student at Hunter College and trying to find space on campus for the showing.
“We love to see people’s reactions to our art. They tell us that they are only photos, but we assure them that what they are looking at is the next step of photography and art,” said Mclucas.