Wave Your Flags: presentation

At last, the time has come: the moment Phildel released a sequel to her amazing 2013 debut album, The Disappearance Of The Girl, I knew my dear friend Luisa and I would reunite to make our own sequel to our 2014 photographic project of the same name. It was just a matter of time. Honestly, we would have done a project on The Glass Ghost too, if it weren’t extremely impractical to organise, what with it being a winter-themed EP and both of us living in places that lack substantial or reliable snowfalls – and even then, we haven’t ruled it out altogether yet. But Wave Your Flags doesn’t need snow, so last year we started talking about it much more concretely. Finally, we decided that, once the covid crisis was over or at least manageable, we’d meet up and shoot the project.

Now, Wave Your Flags the album came out in 2019 and we had to wait until now to make something with it because, you guess it, covid.

Truth be told, though, not only  did the pandemic postpone the shoot, it also did directly shape the series considerably. Luisa got vaccinated much sooner than I did and, when we were talking early logistics, there was no way of knowing when I’d get my own shot yet. Since visiting me in Trieste or Alghero wasn’t that big of a difference to her, I decided to invite her to Sardinia – which would also allow us to take advantage of the much prettier sea here for the three sea-related songs in the album. If I had been in Trieste or had the possibility to go back there sooner, a considerable part of the series would have looker much, much different and I would have had to conceptualise around the lack of pretty-looking beaches there.

Speaking of covid, I also want to emphasise that we only started discussing logistics concretely once Luisa was fully vaccinated and there were tentative talks of my age group getting the shot in my own region: I wouldn’t have put her at risk of being in public without a mask, or sharing a home with an unvaccinated me – let alone travelling at all! – if that hadn’t been the case. The whole series was realised after both Luisa and my mother, who often assisted us, were fully vaccinated, and I got the first dose and had at least partial protection. Also, over two weeks had passed for all of us, meaning we’d given time to our immune systems to produce enough antibodies. As frustrating as this pandemic is for many artists, especially performers, personally I will never, ever put anyone’s health at risk just to get a good photo.

As for the project itself, I have to admit it was a very rewarding but also challenging experience on all fronts. First off, I had to really push against general anxiety and depression to get the creative juices flowing when conceptualising the images; it took me longer than usual to do so, but fortunately Luisa provided considerable input for songs I was less sure about and that part worked out eventually. I was also afraid I’d be rusty after over a year of almost only taking self-portraits, but that turned out not to be the case: there was no shaky hands, no flimys focus, no particular trouble with cropping and framing… muscle memory didn’t fail me at all!

Finally, the nature of the project – eleven pictures that share a common origin, but must otherwise work as individual pieces, each with its own character and mood – made it so it wasn’t, like, I could just do one big shoot and pick eleven photos out of it, but rather eleven individual shoots (plus a few non-related ones) that should yield one photo each! And each needed its own preparation, styling, often different locations and light conditions, all squeezed in a four-day time frame.

It was tyring but now, with all photos taken and post-produced, I can wholeheartedly say it was completely worth it: Wave Your Flags is one of the projects I’m proudest of in my entire catalogue!

One final thing I feel like saying is that it helped a lot to work with a model that could bring along a huge and diverse wardrobe: we had plenty of outfits to choose from, so each photo could be styled differently according to its own mood and concept. We ended up reusing one outfit twice because it worked well with two concepts (while other outfits remained unused), but it was simply the best choice for both works.

And that’s pretty much it as for the project in general. I’ll discuss each photo more in detail with individual posts, like I did with The Disappearance Of The Girl. I sincerely hope you all enjoy the photos, as much effort was put into them by all those involved. And don’t forget to go check Phildel’s music out: she’s an endless source of inspiration!