Dario Calmese

Dario Calmese is a New York City-based artist, creative director, photographer, and design theorist whose work spans art, fashion, and academia. Classically trained in the performing arts, Calmese incorporates his understanding of movement, gesture, and psychology to create characters and narratives that explore history, race, class, and the human experience. Initially interested in clinical psychology, he earned a bachelor's degree before transitioning to a career in performance and later relocating to New York City, where he completed graduate studies in fashion photography at the School of Visual Arts. This combination of academic rigor, performance training, and visual artistry shapes his creative approach.

Calmese became the first Black photographer to shoot a cover for Vanity Fair with his portrait of Academy Award-winning actress Viola Davis. The image references the carte-de-visite portrait of Peter Gordon, known as "The Scourged Back" by McPherson & Oliver, which appeared in the Independence Day edition of Harper's Weekly. Calmese's portraits of Black creatives, including Beyoncé Knowles Carter, playwright Matthew Lopez, activist DeRay McKesson, and dancer Courtney Celeste Spears, have been featured in magazines and exhibitions internationally.

Beyond photography, Calmese has served as casting director and later director for Kerby Jean-Raymond's Pyer Moss fashion shows, including directing the Pyer Moss show at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn. His show direction for Pyer Moss has received recognition in Vogue and The New York Times. Calmese has also collaborated with designer Phillip Lim and participated in the 3.1 Phillip Lim "take time off" campaign. His artistic works have been exhibited at venues such as Aperture Gallery in New York City, Jack Shainman Gallery, and the National Museum of Turkmenistan.

Calmese launched "The Institute of Black Imagination," a global platform for Black creativity and cultural production, which includes a podcast exploring design, equity, and inclusion. He has collaborated with Adobe Lightroom to design presets for people of color and contributes writing to The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and The Business of Fashion. Calmese is a NYC Urban Design Forum Fellow.

A Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Calmese has served on the global advisory board for Estée Lauder Companies and is a professor at Parsons School of Design, where he leads the course "Decolonizing the Gaze: Fashion, Race and the Aesthetics of Visual Design." He also serves on the advisory board of The Museum at FIT and is a former Ideas City Fellow at New Museum in New York City. Calmese's work continues to influence the fields of art, photography, fashion, and design.