FERAL: by Mark de Paola

In 2020 as New York City was shutting down, Mark de Paola left for one year to pursue a personal project he had always yearned to have the time to complete. With much of his work grounded in the need for a complete team of hair, makeup, styling, and working models, he wanted to escape these boundaries and simply work with people without a pretense for the fashion industry. 

What started as a one-year project focusing on the Monterey Peninsula, has now expanded into a grander narrative of the rewilding of feral women into a natural landscape stripped of etiquette, cultural pretense, and rules. 

Feral opened as a solo exhibition in March of 2021 in Monterey, California. One year later, he brings to you a selection of his updated images to recontextualize the series' narrative. 

This series is an ongoing project for the next few years to eventually be compiled into a forthcoming fine art monograph in 2024.