Horowitz continues his ongoing interest in exploring the intersection of landscape and portraiture and how hyper-realism morphs into abstraction. Shot with the same "glamour" lighting set-up used for fashion images, these photographs subvert that process to look at what is real rather than ideal.

In the new body of work entitled DRAG, a new psychological element enters the artist's earlier explorations of faces and bodies. The theatrical artifice of the make-up, similar to a mask, is at once concealing and revealing. We find ourselves shocked, drawn in, immersed, fascinated, yet a bit squeamish. Horowitz masterfully plays with the tension between attraction and repulsion. The over-the-top vamping and exhibitionist joy of drag queens is tempered by a simultaneous sadness and introspection. By exploding scale, Horowitz reveals not only the fascinating visual terrain of the face but also challenges our own hidden biases about femininity and masculinity, beauty and ugliness, gay culture, race, sexuality, and aging.

Horowitz initiated this series by shooting Washington DC's acclaimed drag queen, Shi-Queeta Lee. Word spread quickly among her friends, so Horowitz was able to photograph many of the city's finest performers over the past two years.

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