When I received an assignment to create a series of VIP portraits for the 150th Anniversary of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, I was excited to say the least. I love the museum’s collection and often drag my assistants and interns along with me when a new exhibition premiers there (or I am in need of some quiet and inspiration). As the night of the gala grew closer the team and I actually started to nerd out a bit and get really fired up about photographing so many respected creators and art world luminaries.

Florian Reither is one-quarter of the Austrian arts group Gelitin, a collective with a reputation for staging unique performances and sensational artistic happenings – such as creating a blind sculpture at the Greene Naftali Gallery, constructing a fifty metre long pink stuffed rabbit in the Alps, or sequestering themselves inside of a giant art-Xerox for a week. Gelitin as a whole provided the closing performance of the evening and as such I only had a few moments to create this portrait between the evening’s scheduled proceedings and the rest of the images I was to shoot that night. We were all glad that we finished that night’s portraits just in time to see Gelitin’s performance – which was one of the highlights of the event.

PS. You should totally follow the Albright-Knox’s Instagram, which features a fascinating look behind the scenes of the gallery.