Air travel has informed Ari Marcopoulos’ life more than most. Beyond a necessary mode of transport, the passenger plane has proved something of quiet point of obsession for the Amsterdam-born, New York-based photographer and filmmaker.
Before moving to New York in 1980 – where Marcopoulos would carve out a career defined by his raw and intimate renderings of some of America’s most significant subcultural protagonists – he spent much of his childhood flying with his father, a commercial airline pilot. A conversation with Marcopoulos reveals a fascination that still burns. He recalls wandering the tarmac, studying the underside of the wings and fuselage; he remembers riding in the cockpit on an overbooked flight en-route to a Euro Cup final; he flaunts an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of new, old and mothballed commercial airplanes – the Lockheed Super Constellation, Douglas DC-8 Stretch and the Boeing 737-MAX among them. - Perimeter Books