The big picture: Landon Nordeman’s party python

Nordeman is a New York-based photographer who has covered political conventions and dog shows for outlets including Time and the New Yorker, though he seems most at home at glitzy soirées. He doesn’t merely process the glamour of these events; with a flashbulb and some unorthodox camera angles, he draws out their intensity and strangeness, tracing the line where excess veers towards the grotesque.

“Something about the unresolved, comic, and at times bizarre tenor of human interaction at parties compels me to photograph,” Nordeman says. In many of the images in his forthcoming show Last Night, at the Leica Gallery in New York, subjects are cropped so only parts of their faces are visible, while secondary elements vie for our attention. Here, the python is so eye-catching we don’t at first notice the hand blocking out much of the foreground. The beer glass it carries frames an identical glass as well as a man’s nose and lips. The effect is destabilising for the viewer, as if we’ve just gatecrashed an A-list party, and knocked back one too many free cocktails, while around us exhibitionists swirl, upstaging one another with their accessories.

Last Night, a solo exhibition of work by Landon Nordeman, is at Leica Gallery NYC from 26 June to 27 July

Photograph by Landon Nordeman