In musical terminology, ‘legato’ refers to a succession of notes played without interruption, a continuous flow that eliminates the breaks between one sound and another. It is precisely this fluid, almost liquid continuity that gives Ariana Zukowski’s latest photographic series its title and spirit.

In Legato, the photographer moves away from the static nature of traditional portraiture to pursue the “silent choreography” that inhabits the studios of painters, DJs, performers and photographers. The project began as an exploration of presence, in which Zukowski did not ask her subjects to pose, but posed them a fundamental question: “When does creation feel most alive for you?”.

The images in this series seem like fragments of an interrupted conversation, where the body is never a static object, but an extension of the creative act. We see this in the detail of a hand holding a brush, captured at the exact moment between decision and intuition; or again, in the play of shadows that projects the outline of a body onto a sea-green wall, suggesting that the artist’s identity is inseparable from the space she inhabits.

The project shines in seemingly marginal details like a fan next to a pair of black pumps abandoned on the wooden floor or the ethereal overlays that hide a woman’s face behind golden reflections and floral blurs. These shots do not document the “what”, but the “how”: the warmth of afternoon light cutting across a leg dressed in white, the concentration manifested in a suspended gesture.

In Legato, Ariana Zukowski manages to make the invisible visible. Creative life exists in the pauses, in the glances that cross the room and in that particular attention that transforms a craft into an existence. It is a delicate study of complicity, a reminder that art, before being a product, is a way of inhabiting time.