Ivory Coast Born and NY grown, Zie Otto is a photographer and artist of process. Placing portraiture on a plane equal to the iconic universality of portrait and fashion photography, the works of NYC-based Zie Otto are at once nakedly direct and difficult to see. His pictures tend to foreground aspects of his subjects, so as to give their whole figure a decided air of ambiguity. Oftentimes, like a movie director, he allows his subjects to hide behind a mask of emotional expressivity: a look concealing the subjectivity of the person who actually gives it.