“Style is something that has an authenticity,” Mark Alan Iantosca says.
He’s a street style and fashion photographer who’s most well known for his work around New York City but has also made a name for himself capturing the style at festival events like Coachella. His photos have drawn fashion lovers and photography junkies alike to follow his blog and Instagram posts.
“You can tell when a person doesn’t try too hard,” he continues, trying to put into words the hard-to-describe seductive quality of the subjects he chooses. “It’s not forced.”
Which isn’t to say Iantosca looks for the casual or boring. When he finds style, it’s often on someone who takes risks. He’s drawn to bright colors, fearless combinations, and quite often those willing to bear a little skin. He loves style that’s a little risky, but risk doesn’t mean wearing something just because it’s out there or different.
True style, for Iantosca, means you take risks because you love and believe in the pieces you adorn your body with. It’s knowing what works rather than searching for the ‘next thing.’ In his photography, Iantosca looks for people who are able to wear their clothing confidently, allowing it to be an extension of who they are, rather than those who are picking crazy pieces just to get noticed.
“People will go pretty far to get their picture taken during fashion week,” he explains, matter of factly. “I tend to ignore it.”
Iantosca didn’t start off in photography. He majored in communications in college. Though, he says, that was “super boring.” So he started taking art and photography classes just for fun, and he found it was the area of study that came easily to him. This love of photography was further cemented when he participated in an internship at a small media start up. The tiny company made good use of his talents, and soon had him taking photos for street style pieces and editorials.
In this gig, it occurred to Iantosca for the first time that photography could actually be a career. So he took the leap, pursuing what would be a passion, rather than a career route that would be safe.
“I’m inspired just by all the energy,” he says of fashion photography. “I get a lot of energy from people and fashion week is so crazy.”
It’s a job he loves, partially because he’s his own boss, and makes his own hours. But mostly because it doesn’t feel like work to him. Even if, for most of us, his days sound pretty intense.
Fashion week, Mark tells Uproxx, “is just relentless, rain, sleet, snow, and heat. I literally can’t think of a day where it was canceled because of weather, even blizzards. I typically start shooting around 10am and shoot until it’s dark out. Then, I work on images until 3am. Wake and repeat.”
He thrives on the pressure though, and despite the physically demanding circumstances that may be going on off camera, his shots appear graceful and effortless.
“I always try and elevate street style,” Iantosca says. “I try to make it look a little more editorial.” It’s a difficult skill — making people on the street look like they’re walking the pages of a glossy magazine.
Though he loves street photography, Iantosca now finds something increasingly appealing about doing editorial work. It may seem counterintuitive, but for him, working with models is way easier than just with regular folks on the street, because they seem more natural. They know how to move, catch the light, and pose in ways that ultimately look more ordinary to the human eye, regardless of the artificial set up.
“I love working with a team and getting a job done,” he says. “Street style can be frustrating. You’re waiting for something to happen, whereas with produced jobs you can make it happen.”