Hunter and Gatti / The Series

Photo: HUNTER & GATTI Talent: ZIYI ZHANG Digital Operator: COVE STUDIO (Toronto Stylist: CHRISTINE LASSUS Hair Stylist: JUKKA Make up Artist: GRACE LEE Manicure: LEEANNE COLLEY (Talents) Editor, Colorist & CGI: MASSIMO C.
At a party in NYC last month hosted by super-chic fashion spawn and art afficionado Julia Restoin Roitfeld, fashion photography duo Cristian Borillo and Martin Cespedes, alias Hunter and Gatti, feted their latest collection of works, The Series with a well-heeled crowd of Art Basel pre-gamers at SoHo's OPENHOUSE Gallery. 

The exhibition centered around a collection of portraits and overpainted photos (acrylic paintings over photograph canvases) that showcased the artists' background in advertising and eye for that unique brand of physical beauty - sometimes unconventional - that is both immensely pleasing and just a little bit scary.

The photographers with hostess Julia Restoin Roitfeld, via Fashion Daily Mag
A standout from Hunter and Gatti's photos-turned-paintings series is from Series 03, originally shot for Flaunt Magazine. The duo debuted the images, along with Flaunt, during the Toronto International Film Festival, and their subject, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon actress Ziyi Zhang lent a fierce, mysterious, and otherworldy presence to an unforgettable spread that transcends the borders between fashion, beauty, and art. 

A major success for Hunter and Gatti, and the Flaunt stylists, is in their portrayal of Zhang as jarringly sensual, but with a strength that is anything but fetishized in a way that sadly, Asian women in fashion and photography are often typecasted.

If you think you don't know Hunter and Gatti, odds are that you've seen, earmarked, pinned, or tacked their campaign and editorial work to your inspiration board at some point. They began in advertizing for Burberry and Diesel, and soon jumped over to the other side of the lens, their marketing skills in tow, as photographers. Aside from their work with Flaunt, they have a prolific portfolio of ads and spreads with brands like Massimo Dutti, Hugo Boss, and Guess, as well as magazines like W, Vogue and Flaunt. Natives of Spain, they have worked with plenty of their paisanos, including Carolina Herrera and Mango.
Unlike a lot of photographers who get boxed in to a style and cruise along without pushing the boundaries (I'm talking to you, Terry Richardson...), Hunter and Gatti's work displays an incredible range of talent and emotion. Their photos are at once varied and diverse, but still iconic and recognizably, and singularly, Hunter and Gatti.In a recent spread for Flaunt magazine, they created a transformative and vulnerable set of images and portraits of pop singer Bruno Mars. 
Other work presented at the OPENHOUSE opening included a brilliant series of portraits that range from endearingly vulnerable photographs of Douglas Booth and David Gandy to classically beautiful, utterly marketable - and referential of the duo's advertizing experience - photographs of Rebecca Ferguson.
Images from Carne, the first volume of Hunter and Gatti's magazine HG Issue were also unveiled, and showcased yet another side to the artists' talents, where warm yet start lighting and oversaturated colors lent a new kind of beauty to the often chaotic, haunting images that centered around the theme Carne, or flesh.
Click through to view images from the opening.
Cheers,Renata