Darkest Hour

“Hold on,
I’ll be home soon
‘Cause I know
There’s nothing more that you can do –

When suddenly, it all fades to black,
Suddenly, it all goes away,
Suddenly, you’re on your own
And struggling to breathe again.
I know it isn’t easy for you,
Knowing there’s a war in your head,
Knowing that your body isn’t
Strong enough to reach for help.

But in your darkest hour
I will the light the way,
I will help you cope
Through the hardest days.
When it all breaks down
I will keep you safe,
In your darkest hour
I will light the way.

So hold on
With all that you have left.
We can take it step by step:
Just do your best, acquiesce.

‘Cause everybody looks just like you
But they can never know how it feels,
They can never know of all the suffering
That you conceal.
How did it end up this way?
How much more can you take?
Will you ever find the strength
To get back on your feet again?

But in your darkest hour
I will light the way,
I will help you cope
Through the hardest days.
When it all breaks down,
I will keep you safe,
In your darkest hour
I will light the way.

So hold on
In your darkest hour,
In your darkest hour,
Just hold on,
Hold on.

In your darkest hour
I will light the way,
I will help you cope
Through the hardest days.
When it all breaks down
I’ll keep you safe,
In your darkest hour
I will light the way.”

[ Darkest Hour – Hurts ]

Yeah, well. Remember all my high proclamations of never ever saving another photo from the Inspiration Hurts project for close friends ever again, to stop taking photos that double as tokens of affection, love is weakness, I’m Regina the Evil Queen, and all of that? I can’t. I mean, I tried. I… okay, let’s rewind.

Look, my dear friend Luisa just happened to be in town specifically to model for me – yeah, imagine that – and since there was her, and there was me, and this photo needed two people to tango, I decided to throw it into our session. Seize the moment, now or never, all that staff. It just so happens that the song it’s inspired by is also very appropriate for the two of us, and that’s a nice bonus that… okay, no.

Really, I just wanted Luisa to be in this photo, and she just happens to actually be a good friend who cares about this stuff.

Luisa and I go back over a decade. We’ve both been through some darkness and, even though we’re not the most talkative of people, we’ve always been there for each other if need be – basically, this song works both ways for us. Besides, she is the one who introduced me to Hurts’ music in the first place by suggesting the concept for Evelyn, so this song and the related photo just had to be ours.

Also – did I mention it already? – a very good friend of mine comes to Sardinia not just to mind her own business but actually to take photos with me, and we end up taking an Inspiration Hurts photo that doubles as a token of affection and a symbol of how much we care for each other, and we actually go through with it, and she doesn’t even have to manipulate or gaslight her way out of it – I mean, could I ever in a million years pass on such a chance to stick it to a certain someone? Of course not, I’m just that petty.

Speaking of petty, if this composition reminds you of a certain other photo from the Inspiration Hurts project, one from a song that’s all about “please save it and get lost”, one which has aged better than the finest vintage you’ll ever drink like I’m a goddamn prophet or something… yeah, that’s deliberate – that’s literally the entire concept.

I took the basic premise of that photo – boy and girl, he to the left and she to the right, sitting and looking out to the sea – and flipped everything else: this one is in colour instead of monochromatic, the sky is clear instead of heavily clouded, the image is sharp instead of grainy, and we’re touching instead of just sitting there side by side contemplating the silent yet inevitable demise of our relationship before one of us walks away, and it’s closely framed around us rather than being wide and including lots of background.

I really wanted to mirror that photo to hopefully make another “prophecy”, that Luisa and I will weather the darkest hours silently having each other’s back, and that brighter times will finally come.

Because there are people in my life who do deserve photos that double as tokens of affection, goddamnit. (Just so you know it, I still hold a grudge for things that went down on my seventh birthday, so no, there’s no chance I’m going to drop this anytime soon.)

 

Now, to be completely honest, you can tell that my last bad experience shooting in Sardinia with friends from elsewhere still seriously haunts me way beyond the occasional snark by the fact that I sort of felt guilty to bring up my own personal project while I was working at our joint one. Aptly, this is the very last photo we took, and initially I was even trying to take it in full daylight as not to inconvenience Luisa with having to wait for sunset on the evening before her departure, in case she wanted to rest. When it became clear that wasn’t working and I would not be able to postproduce my way out of those light conditions to achieve what I had in mind, Luisa herself was the one to suggest we’d come down at a proper hour and take the photo the way it was meant to be – again, imagine that. It was a very nice way to end our four-day photoshoot, and one which made me feel appreciated. It’s another step in the direction of rebuilding the trust in people who agree to help me with my own passion projects.

So here we are, sitting side by side, watching together as the sun rises and puts an end to our darkest hour, all with those real-life undertones that will make me cherish this photo way beyond its artistic merits.

Thank you, Luisa, for believing in me and making art with me.

Wings

“When you find me free falling out of the sky
And I’m spiralling out of control,
When I drop like a cannonball from cloud nine,
Just promise you won’t let me go.

Say you’ll catch me when I fall,
Wrap your wings around my body
When I’m lost in the storm
And I’m calling.

Wrap your wings around my body,
Wrap your wings around my body.
Wrap your wings, wrap your wings,
Wrap your wings around my body.

When we stood on the skyline there was no turning back
And you said not to stare at the ground.
There’s a hole in my parachute as big as my heart
And the gravity’s pulling me down.

Will you catch me when I fall,
Wrap your wings around my body
When I’m lost in the storm
And I’m calling?

Wrap your wings around my body,
Wrap your wings around my body.
Wrap your wings, wrap your wings,
Wrap your wings around my body.

We’re flying above the valley below,
We’re flying above the valley below.
We’re flying above the valley below,
We’re flying above the valley below.

Wrap your wings around my body,
Wrap your wings around my body.
Wrap your wings, wrap your wings,
Wrap your wings around my body.”

[ Wings – Hurts ]

My oldest notes about a concept for Wings read as follow: “She embraces her / him from behind; the arms are wrapped in flowy fabric, floating in the wind like wings”.

Wow. Boooo-ring.
Basically, I was just going to rip off Wonderful Life, but at a closer range and with floaty sleeves. Did I say, boring?

That’s one of the reasons I never quite did anything with Wings, besides the fixation that there had to be a real-life couple for sentiment and blah blah blah. That is, until mid-2019, when  I was browsing DeviantArt for witchcraft-themed photos for a feature journal and I came across Dark Water Witch by Anndr and Kabarsa. Visually striking, extremely evocative and… wait, that’s a really great idea!

What if I still had a couple, alright, but with an “angel girl” archetype of courtly poetry inspiration who’s actually down below, waiting to catch and save the boy falling from up above? Play with perspective, shoot them both separately, then flip the photo of him and mash the two images together. That’s much more visually striking than just “upright spooning with floaty fabric”.

 

At this point, my mindset was still set on “romance”, so I was still expecting to cast a real-life couple for the photo. One potential occasion I considered to take Wings was the photoshoot for Stay with Loli and Nicola, but Stay was draining enough on its own given its history, plus there was not a breath of wind in for the sleeves that day, so I gave that up. Then I was all out of couples for the next few months until, y’know, 2020 happened, which made me bury and forget this photo for a while.

Including Wings into the session with Luisa was an almost last-minute decision which, given the themes of other photos such as La Cura, I’m actually surprised I didn’t take sooner. Perhaps because I was so fixated on the romantic undertones of the song that I totally overlooked it could very well also apply to friendship. Me and a friend and my camera were a perfect fit for this photo.

Now, I knew all along that going from concept to finished piece was going to be challenging. It required two separate portraits with compatible light, enough room to make a really wide image, and an inordinate amount of editing.

I shot Luisa’s portrait first, squeezing it in-between Wave Your Flags and Glorious in a moment when the clouds got thicker and, thus, the light was at its most neutral, and then, locking the focus to have the correct depth of field, I took several shots of the background so I wouldn’t have space problems composing a panoramic picture if I had to make the image wider to fit my full figure, or even tweaking her pose according to my position if necessary.

As we were on a tight schedule with our main project, I left my own portrait for another time, which was actually a few days after Luisa even left, when I got similar light conditions to that evening. In theory, if I were falling from the sky, I would be shot slightly from below, so I set the camera on a higher position than I’d be so the downwards perspective would turn upwards in the rotated image. I also chose a light concrete setting, which would be easier to edit out of the final image against a cloudy sky. With my mother’s assistance, I took several shots while jumping to give momentum to my legs and not have my feet flat on the soil, until I was satisfied with one of the takes.

Finally, I shot the sky so I could fill in the originally horizontal picture of Luisa and turn it vertical to accomodate me.

I did the postproduction live on Discord with my best friend, who’s a paintress and could give me some advice about the relative proportions and positions of the two figures, to make sure everything clicked together. As expected, I ended up widening the background in Luisa’s photo, then added the sky to make the image vertical, and finally positioned my photo according to Luisa’s. There was also some tweaking of our poses, for which the separate backgrounds were helpful, but the bulk of the work was just to edit our the concrete around me, half of which I accomplished simply by subtracting all the black selectively from the white channels. Then a little colour filtering to make the image look prettier and ta-dah!

Now, this is one of those cases in which the final work lies halfway between actual photograph and photomanipulation. In this cases, when you’re taking a photo of something that’s not entirely there, planning ahead is vital. You need a clear final image in mind in order to take all the photos as matching as possible, and it’s also important to make a mental map of everything you might need for the final image, such as extra background shots, in order to make them as compatible as possible and make the editing process easier and the final result more photorealistic.

It is a challenge, but one that’ll leave you fulfilled and satisfied in the end.

Mercury

Mercury, the planet of communication, intellect, curiosity, understanding and expression.

The third Personal Planet, it represents all the ways people express themselves, communicate with one another, approach knowledge and process information. It also represents nervous breakdowns, indecisiveness and over-analysis to keep under check.

Ruler of Gemini and Virgo, it has its exaltation in Virgo, fall in Leo and Pisces, detriment in Sagittarius.

Its glyph represents Hermes’ caduceus and winged petasos, and its meaning is Spirit connecting Matter and Soul.

Okay, as you might know, I’m a Gemini: it’s no wonder, then, that I have a natural affinity with anything about Mercury or Hermes. Favourite planet in astronomy? Mercury! Favourite Greek god? Hermes? Favourite Sailor Senshi? Sailor Mercury (and the Outers, but that’s another matter)! Sexiest character in Blood of Zeus? Hermes! Favourite one in Lore Olympus? That’s a close call but again, Hermes! Also, remember that time I went around Trieste hunting down every last statue of Hermes? You get the picture.

So of course, if I was really planning an entire series about the Planets in astrology, I was going to be Mercury. Technically it isn’t even the first time I’ve done that, since I assigned the embodiment / rulership of astrological Mercury to Astaroth in my Infernal Lords series: this is just one step further.

Said plans were actually not a spur-of-the-moment decision in the wake of how glorious Venus turned out last year: checking the metadata for the wings I shot to complete this photo, I took those in September 2018, which means by then the general concept for the project had already formed in my head, and I had a few specifics sorted out too.

One of these specifics was that the Sun and the two inferior planets (those orbiting closer to the Sun than Earth, i.e. Mercury and Venus) would be back-lit, in the former’s case to make it look radiant, and in the latter’s because that would be the “correct” light from our perspective, as they’re never too far from the Sun.

In practice, this translated into a painstakingly long process that involved going to the park, baiting birds with breadcrumbs, then scaring them away so I could take photos while they spread their wings, which had to be back-lit too to correctly fit the final image. And fun fact, while the wings sat there in my external hard drive for two years and a half, at some point I thought I’d have to reshoot them now I had upgraded my telephoto lens, until I tried using them as a place holder and found out they actually looked good in the context of the photo.

What I did have to reshoot was the portrait: I gave it a first try back in October last year, but the photos from that session were unconvincing and, after a few weeks of fiddling with them, I decided to scrap them and start over. For one thing the modelling was too stiff to represent dynamic, quick-moving and quick-thinking Mercury. Also, the abuse of a reflecting panel made for some not-so-good lighting with too much of a yellowish tone for the blue hues I had in mind (yes, I’m going to be shamelessly stealing the Sailor Senshi’s colour schemes for this project). I had also half-assed the styling and grooming (most notably, short sleeves don’t work well with the pose and a linen scarf is too heavy to float in the breeze), plus I was facing the camera and that didn’t jam well with the wings: there’s a reason why every Hermes/Mercury statue, bust or what not has them parallel to the skull, and that’s not to make them look like donkey ears. Trust me, spread head wings don’t look pretty.

 

Having learned from my mistakes, I purchased a couple of new white shirts for the project, waited out winter and the string of partial lock-downs in the past months, got a new haircut to have hairdresser-fresh grooming, and finally set off to rectify the situation. As usual, a huge chunk of the praise has to go to my assistant, my mother DamaInNero, for helping me out with the self-portrait (i.e.: I did the set up, but it was her who clicked and captured the precise moment when I was at my most flowy).

Speaking of which, I’m pretty satisfied with the pose and the flow of the scarf: it sort of looks as if Mercury just paused for a moment to check social media before taking off and flying somewhere that caught his attention.

As with Venus, I went for some pretty straight-forward symbolism: extra emphasis on communication and curiosity symbolised by the smartphone, a device that literally puts humankind’s entire knowledge in your hands, and the wings to nod back to Hermes and to symbolise a “winged mind”, so to speak. They also double as an oblique reference to Mercury’s planetary symbol, the caduceus with the winged petasos (travelling hat).

There’s no astronomical easter egg this time because Mercury is a fickle little bitch who likes evading observation and photography. Also, as you can guess, I won’t pass on the chance to put halos on each single character this time around, so halo it is.

 

At this point, with two thematically similar works already done, there’s no point denying this has become my latest long-term project. The next work is really going to codify it for good: I’m not planning on doing the Sun anytime soon because I don’t have the right model, so the next Planet is going to decide whether the back light is just for the inferior planets or the aesthetic for the entire project. I might have someone in mind while I’m still here in Sardinia, especially now that my age group is getting vaccinated and I’ll be able to meet my friends again, so here’s hoping there will be new additions soon.

All I Have To Give

“Staring in the mirror,
Watching as the walls are closing in,
A shadow of a figure
Trying to make the best of the state that I am in.
I guess I could do with the friends I’ve been pushing away,
But I’m destined to suffer until I discover the reasons I’m afraid.

God knows I try:
It might not be good enough,
But it’s all I have to give,
This is all I have to give.
You might be right sometimes,
I never open up,
But it’s all I have to give,
This is all I have to give.

Staring in the mirror,
Picturing the face of a younger man.
He buries it away
‘Cause he’s gotta try and cope in a way he understands.
Be there for your brother and strong for your mother again
‘Cause he’s too young to get it and she’ll get upset if she knows you feel the pain.

God knows I try:
It might not be good enough,
But it’s all I have to give,
This is all I have to give.
You might be right sometimes,
I’m too scared to open up,
But it’s all I have to give,
This is all I have to give to you.

I tell myself there’s nothing left to lose.
I don’t know why I’m hiding from the truth.
I face myself and all I see is you,
Is you
Staring in the mirror,
Watching as the walls are closing in.

But God knows I try,:
It might not be good enough,
But it’s all I have to give,
This is all I have to give.
You might be right sometimes,
I’m too scared to open up,
But it’s all I have to give,
This is all I have to give to you,
To you,
This is all I have to give.”

[ All I Have To Give – Hurts ]

It’s kinda easy and tempting to dismiss All I Have To Give as just your garden-variety soppy piano ballad: I almost did initially. For the first few plays I gave Faith, I regarded it as the weak link of an otherwise consistently strong album. Thankfully, once I get familiar with the melody, I’ve got the habit to add the lyrics to my iTunes files, which require a specific listen during which I double check if everything is in order (yeah, I’ve got my idiosyncratic rituals when I listen to music). And lo and behold, is this apparently harmless ballad actually about the fact that Theo suffers from depression? Yeah, dude, same: welcome to the club. Suddenly, All I Have To Give had become one of the most relatable songs in Hurts’ entire catalogue, and its apparent simplicity had turned into a mark of sincerity and openness.

Once I got to work on a photographic concept, I decided to start with two reoccurring keywords in the lyrics: the mirror and the fear of opening up, the latter symbolised by the shut jewellery box and resting bitch face. I decided to basically make a still life with my trustworthy Mirror Of Decay (of Morphine fame), the box and a few other items, with a model (myself) appearing as a reflection.

As for the objects, aside from the candles, which are mostly for dressing, I included a vintage Industar 50mm lens (which belonged to my mother’s now defunct analogue camera) as the “all I have to give”: sometimes I do feel as if my artistic output is the only thing I am able to give, or the most effective way in which I can sort out and communicate my feelings. The calendar (which returned from Gloomy Sunday) and broken clock (from the unrelated We Just Stopped Breathing) are there to represent the weird relationship between depression and time: sometimes it feels like days are just running by with no way to slow them down or at least savour them, sometimes like time has frozen and the clock won’t move.

 

It took me a while to get down to shooting the photo because the weather has been too gloomy for an indoor photo, given that all my light equipment is still in Trieste, but at last I took advantage of yesterday’s sun and shot it.

From a technical standpoint, the photo actually consists of two merged exposures, one focussed on the still life scene and one on the reflection, which is optically much farther away and thus can’t be focussed on at the same time unless you shut the diaphragm to a prohibitive degree, given the light conditions. I also made no effort to hide the chip in the mirror or the surface being unglued from the frame, to further emphasise a sense of weariness. You can also have a glimpse of my CD library because I wanted to ground the photo in reality rather than depict it in some abstract space.

So there it is, a rather simple photo with some below-the-surface symbolism, much like the song has hidden depths beneath its sweet ballad appearance.

Sandman

“I spend these waking hours looking for the sandman.
I spend these waking hours looking for his master plan.
I’ll wait till morning, till he comes to my house,
And he’ll give no warning when he’s knocking me out, oh.

So sing me to sleep tonight, yeah,
And don’t bring me back to life.

I spend these waking hours looking for the sandman.
I spend these waking hours looking for his master plan.
He will be sorry when he comes to my house:
I’ll show no mercy till the lights go out, oh.

So sing me to sleep tonight, yeah,
And don’t bring me back to life.

We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.
We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.
We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.
We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.

So sing me to sleep tonight, yeah,
And don’t bring me back to life, yeah.

We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.
We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.
We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.
We’re waiting for the sandman, but he never heeds the call.”

[ Sandman – Hurts ]

Sandman is one of those Hurts song which I really, really like but never quite knew what to do with. On the one hand it’s weird, since I perceive the song as being about insomnia, which I can relate to. On the other, it may be because I’m Italian and the Sandman is a foreign mythological figure to me: so while I do understand the metaphor on an intellectual level as an adult, it doesn’t quite speak to me on that personal, visceral level as something from my childhood would.

With this in mind, I kind of always left this song shelved while focussing on other photos for the project, giving it a thought or two every now and again but without much luck. Concepts I considered included: two models – one being the Sandman and the other the speaker – interacting in an ambiguously flirty way, but then I thought it would be too much of a rehash of Cupid; a male model rolling in the sand by the beach or letting it flow through his fingers, but that sounded generic and not really relevant to the song; a male model in the sand with an horglass, basically a remake of a very old photo of mine, which sounded at least a bit mystical in theory but never totally convinced me. The idea of the hourglass, however, stuck to the back of my mind and came back in full force once I made up my mind at last.

 

The right visual cue I finally found on Tumblr in Riding Solo, an editorial by Garrett Naccarato which made an amazing use of grazing light to give just an impression of Thierry Marin’s jawline while leaving most of his features in deep shadows. I found that visually striking and thought it would work very well for my photo: having a human figure shrouded in mystery would leave the focus on the sandglass, whose shape would be very distinctive even with grazing light.

One thing I hadn’t accounted for, which I noticed while doing some light tests, was the sandglass being, well, a glass filled with shifting sand, duh. That meant the glass was full of microscopic scratches that would refract the light and illuminate the whole thing, which was even better for my concept. After the test shoots, all I had to do was trim my beard, wash and style my hair, paint my nails, and today I took the photo with some assistance from my mother.

So, while the concept is still quite loose, I decided to make up for it with strong visuals. This is pretty much the opposite of the approach I always had, especially at the beginning when strong visuals were out of my reach and I had to make up with solid concepts, but I considered an important learning experience: even thinking outside of my box, I managed to get a photo I love and am proud of.

Numb

“I breathe,
I breathe again.
My mind
Is set to ‘stun’ again
And ‘make you dull’ again.

Not all of my scars are visible,
Not all of my thoughts are pitiful.
My exaltation’s chemical, uh.
I know that I’m stuck inside a rut
But now that I’ve taken twice as much,
Oh, oh yeah,

I just feel nothing at all
And I’m not stopping till I detach from you.
I just feel nothing at all
And I’m not stopping till I detach from you, uh.
I’m numb.

I breathe,
I breathe again.
I need to find some release
Until the fever ends
And I slip away again.

Not all of my scars are visible,
Not all of my pain is physical.
This apathy is beautiful, uh.

I just feel nothing at all
And I’m not stopping till I detach from you.
I just feel nothing at all
And I’m not stopping till I detach from you.
I’m so numb.”

[ Numb – Hurts ]

Pretty much a counterpart to Somebody, Numb is another of my “revenge photoshoots” inspired by that same situation. Indeed, I applied the same rationale of going to the location where I had the last photoshoot with that specific person and build the image around that.

This time, you probably won’t recognise the place because that photoshoot I’m referencing was that person’s passion project and I let them publish it without bothering doing it myself; but if you have figured out whom I’m referring to, you can check their Instagram and recognise the very distinctive rocks in the background.

On a little tangent, that specific photoshoot does make me angry in retrospect because the person had just arrived in town after two flights, but they weren’t too tired to go shooting their passion project straightaway, while one of the excuses to dodge the rescheduling of Stay was they had a pleasure boat cruise in the morning and that would make them too tired to shoot in the afternoon. Like, seriously? A-are you for real?

Moving on, Numb is almost industrial in sound, with an obsessive beat and prominent rough-sounding synths. One reason why I decided to reference that shoot was the terrain would provide a nice visual link to the music, with the multiple segments recalling the beat and the bare rocks the texture of the instruments. Also, the song feels very dynamic, which the natural diagonal lines would easily convey.

The only problem with that location is that I envisioned a diffused light, so I had to wait for the perfect day to shoot, namely cloudy but without too much wind. The reason you can guess looking at Storm’s End: when the weather is too bad, the waves completely leap over the rocks, so I would have caught a cold and destroyed my camera in the process. Speaking of Storm’s End, yeah, the photoshoot with my former friend and the ensuing disappointment are what I was obliquely referring to with the title and in the description, but getting closure is still a work in progress on my part.

As for the modelling, I kind of immediately figured I’d be holding a knife in it and be ambiguous about its purpose: might be an embodiment of the pain the protagonist went through, an item to cut the person off, a toy to play with because the numbness won’t make him feel any pain, or maybe I’m just about to jump off the photo and cut some bitch. I also considered but eventually decided against including blood because, that way, whatever wound would be invisible and metaphorical as in the lyrics.

The pose was very uncomfortable because there was basically no room for my legs and I had to keep them at a weird angle, which made me look unsettled but, against all odds, contributed to the dynamism of the image, as did the impromptu coiffure a gust of wind gave me. I’m particularly proud of that because, while most of the photo was carefully planned down to what kind of monochrome I would turn it to and what light would make it look its best, I managed to make those little unplanned details work in favour of the shoot.

And in many ways, that’s the very basis of this photo: I took a situation that kept bogging the Inspiration Hurts project down until it reached a boiling point and escalated outside of photography, and used it to fuel the project itself. I don’t know if I would have come up as easily with concepts for Somebody and Numb if I hadn’t had all this shade to serve.

That is not to say I’m thankful to that person, though. Even outside of my petty squabble, there’s one thing I want to say: never be thankful to the people who hurt you. You haven’t grown up thanks to that pain, you did despite it. They have no business flattering themselves by taking any credits for it.

Fractured

“I’m a typical
Hypocritical,
Egotistical-minded
Individual.
I’m a silent fuse,
I’m a tightening screw
And I might be everything
That is wrong for you.

Because I’m fractured:
Get your hands off me!
Because I’m fractured:
Get your hands off me!
Because I’m fractured:
Get your hands off me!
Get your hands off me!

I’m a cynical,
Analytical,
Apocalyptical-minded
Individual.
I’m a twisted wheel,
An Achilles’ heel
And I can’t communicate
Anything I feel.

Why?

Because I’m fractured:
Get your hands off me!
Because I’m fractured:
Get your hands off me!
Because I’m fractured:
Get your hands off me!
Get your hands off me!

Fractured,
Because I’m fra—”

[ Fractured – Hurts ]

Actually, this is the first photo from the Faith batch of the Inspiration Hurts project that I conceptualised. It’s a very distinctive song, with its experimental feel, immediate visual motives, super-relatable lyrics and… well, full-blown weirdness, in a good sense. It’s almost rapped, except half of it is whispered and the other is downright spit with contempt. God, I missed Hurts at their best.

So yeah, this is a photo that was practically taking itself from the get go: a dirty, cracked glass, and each piece shows a different reflection or scene, all in a different state of neurotic meltdown. Something unpretty and experimental to go along with the music of the song, while providing an immediate link with the imagery in the lyrics.

Shooting the photos was pretty quick and easy: I did it in the same session as Voices, being careful to have the same light and, especially, focal distance so that I would be the same size on each piece of the “puzzle”. Beside being the quickest and easiest solution, I wanted to model myself because I can absolutely relate with this song.

The biggest load of work was definitely postproduction: I started by working on the cracks, which I drew myself (I’m trying to avoid unnecessary outings due to the pandemics, so there was no way I would hunt the city for a broken window or something), then I preemptively shaped all the masks on solid colour layers so it would be easier to insert the individual photos, added each self-portrait, beauty-retouched each of them on the spot, made sure the composition made sense, turned it monochromatic and added the dirty glass texture for a more photorealistic effect. It took me about one whole evening, but it’s one of those graphic projects that relax me while keeping me challenged at the same time, so I actually had a lot of fun.

I’ve got another couple of photos that I can do quickly and easily now before Faith hits the “I need a couple modelling for me” standstill that has swamped the previous three albums. I think I’ll try to take them in the coming weeks while still high on inspiration from the recent album release, then we’ll see where these crazy times take us.

Stay safe, everybody.

Voices

“Say my name
And save me once again,
Just say my name.
Too far gone,
Is this where I belong?
Am I too far gone?

I can hear them in my head and I,
I can hear them and I wanna get ‘em out.
I can hear them in my head
Getting louder now.

So endlessly
These voices keep on calling me to rise,
These voices keep on praying for me,
These voices keep on praying for me:
I can’t stop them now.

Each step I take
I make the same mistake,
But they scream my name.
And I know it’s wrong
To keep marching on and on,
But I’m too far gone.

I can hear them in my head and I,
I can hear them and I wanna get ‘em out.
I can hear them in my head
Getting louder now.

So endlessly
These voices keep on calling me to rise,
These voices keep on praying for me,
These voices keep on praying for me:
I can’t stop them now.

I keep hearing them,
Hearing them come,
Hearing them voices.
I keep hearing them,
Hearing them come,
Hearing them voices.

I heard them say,
I heard them say,
I can’t stop them now.
I can hear them in my head and I,
I can’t stop them now,
I can hear them and I wanna get ‘em out.
I can hear them in my head
Getting louder now.

So endlessly
These voices keep on calling me to rise,
They keep on calling me, yeah.
These voices keep on praying for me,
These voices keep on praying for me:
I can’t stop them now,
I can’t stop them now.”

[ Voices – Hurts ]

To put it mildly, I wasn’t very impressed the first time I listened to Voices. Coming off the heels of the huge personal disappointment that was Desire, an album so bland and generic that any lesser band could have recorded, the funky rhythm and acoustic guitar of this song’s intro made me worry that the previous album wouldn’t be an unfortunate yet isolated misstep, but the new standard for an insipid musical production by a band that once left one of the biggest marks on my own artistry (though admittedly, I still thought Voices was better than anything on Desire). And honestly, I have no plans to adapt any songs on Desire into photos for the time being: I might after I’m done with everything else on Hurt’s catalogue, but I’m definitely in no hurry. So yeah, I was worried for the future of the project.

Thankfully, upon release Faith has proven a full return to form (even to pre-Surrender standards, at that) and I immediately started mining it for inspiration. Even Voices itself has grown on me with a few spins, and the lyrics have provided me with enough material to start working on a visual rendition.

Now, admittedly, “voices” might not be the easiest concept to represent visually, but since the lyrics specify they are prayers, I decided to use a multitude of hands encircling the main character in the photo, some joint in prayer, some bearing offerings such as candles, some just reaching out. Since the song is ambivalent on whether those voices are good or not, if their uplift is welcome or not, I decided the situation with the hands in my photo, too, would be ambiguous: are they helpful? Are they trying to save the main character? Are they pulling him apart? I leave it open for the viewer to decide.

On a production note, all the hands are obviously my own because, after a new surge in covid cases in my area, I’m back to stricter social distancing and would rather avoid shooting with other people. I tried as many different angles and poses as possible to give the photo the visual equivalent of a crowded, nosy space with many different pitches and words all spoken all at once.

As for general aesthetics, beside using dramatic lighting I went quasi-monochromatic because it’s the prevalent aesthetic for this Hurts era, and chunked up the grain and scratches as a homage to the grittiness of the lyric video for the song.

I’m already working on the next Inspiration Hurts photo, which I shot in the same session as Voices, and another one is coming as soon as possible. I’m really glad for this inspiration spree and I’ll try to milk it as much as I can.

Somebody

“I am not a victim, I’m not a fool,
I am not a pawn to be abused.
It was never real, it was never love
And I’ve had enough.
I don’t wanna listen, I don’t wanna try
‘Cause you that know that I’ll never miss you or the way you lie.
I don’t wanna listen, I don’t wanna stay,
But I finally got the strength in me to say,

I’m gonna find somebody
To treat me better than you.
Gonna find somebody
To treat me better than you,
Treat me better than…
I’m sick and tired of the things you’ve done, but
You won’t be laughing when I find someone,
Somebody
To treat me better than you,
Treat me better than…

You think you’re funny, I’m not amused.
You will never win, I’ll never lose.
‘Cause now I’m better
In spite of you, in spite of you.
Now you wanna listen, now you wanna try,
But you know that it’s too late to apologise.
So just think about me, what you wanna say
As you stand alone and watch me walk away.

I’m gonna find somebody
To treat me better than you.
Gonna find somebody
To treat me better than you,
Treat me better than…
I’m sick and tired of the things you’ve done, but
You won’t be laughing when I find someone,
Somebody
To treat me better than you.

Somebody that ain’t like, ain’t like you,
Somebody that ain’t like you.
Somebody that ain’t like, ain’t like you,
Somebody that ain’t like you.
Treat me better than…
Somebody that ain’t like, ain’t like you,
Somebody that ain’t like you.”

[ Somebody – Hurts ]

Well, long time no see.
After the huge disappointment that was Desire, Hurts have come back with the much better, much more inspiring Faith… a good 60% of which are post-break up songs along the lines of “It’s not me, it’s you. Bitch.”.
Considering that Stay, a photo from the Inspiration Hurts project, was the casus belli that derailed a certain friendship I’m still quite rancorous about, I’ve decided I’m not only gonna roll with it, I’m milking it for all its worth without even bothering with subtlety! It’s a sign, it’s made for me, for my project to go on in spite of that particular incident and all the others before (looking at you, Wonderful Life and some other seven photos from this projects that have been on hold because of that certain person)!

Somebody is the first new song I’m adapting into a photo for pragmatic reasons: it’s already October, the weather has been getting worse and worse, and with my having to be half in water it’s basically now or next year. Which honestly, thanks but no thanks: this project needs to be much more veni, vidi, vici from now on, anything I can do now I’m gonna do now.
There are other songs from Faith that have given me more concrete imagery to base photos off, so I decided to use the freedom Somebody allows me to go fully self-referential. Besides taking a clue from Theo’s jerking dance moves in the video, which would look kinda amazing in the water, I decided to go shoot at the very same location where I shot the last photo I published with the person I’m throwing shade at, dressed in similar colours, from a similar angle, with similar light conditions, and I even used the same colour filter in postproduction. It’s literally me replacing them in the photo, only this time it’s inspired by a song that literally says they’re gonna be replaced with someone better, and having a damn good time with it.
I’m not gonna name names, but if you scroll through my gallery and look at one of my latest portraits by the sea, you’ll recognise the shape of the rocks.

On a side note, the music video for Somebody features multiple shots of flamingos and a vulture eating from a skull, while the single artwork and video thumbnail for the song are close-ups of a flamingo. Since I was lucky enough to have a couple of cormorants hanging around, I decided to incorporate them into the photo as a nod to the original visuals.
Also, the beautiful t-shirt I’m wearing is an original design by my friends at Kingyo Sukui: check them out, they’ve got some amazing merch!

I mentioned I’ll try to speed up things with the Inspiration Hurts series and I’ve already planned many new photos from Faith. I’m probably influenced by the DIY aestehtics of the album cover and promo photos (many of which were takend by Adam and Theo themselves during lockdown), so a lot of ideas are studio self-portraits which I’ll be able to take quickly, most likely in a couple of weeks, after I get a haircut. Wouldn’t want to let that perfect haistyle go to waste, would we?

Gloomy Sunday

[ Gloomy Sunday – Hurts ]

Not to be confused with either Sunday or the infamous Hungarian Suicide Song, Gloomy Sunday was the title of a short instrumental piece for string quartet that Hurts used to play as an interlude in-between the main set and the encore during the Happiness tour. Theo and Adam would go backstage and the quartet would play while two ballerinas would do a coreography until the main duo were back for the next song. It’s featured, for instance, in the Live in Berlin bonus DVD of the deluxe edition of Happiness.

For a piece of music so obscure it makes the likes of Once and Locked Out Of Heaven look basically official in the Hurts discography, you’d expect me to leave it alone and forget about it, but nope. Firstly because I gave even the Intro of that concet the photo treatment, and secondly because Gloomy Sunday is quite a beautiful, atmospheric and inspiring piece on its own. You listen to it and you can totally feel the ennui rising up.

Well, obscure or not, this song has been around for the better part of a decade, and yet I haven’t done anything with it in the past eight-ish years or so – though weirdly enough for this project, this time it’s my own fault. Aside from being adamant about shooting and publishing it on an actual Sunday, I had half a mind of tributing the ballerina set with some black tulle and feathers, a heavy, scaly make up to recall the Black Swan, and red ribbons like those the ballerina used in their dance. Also, I wanted it to be set in a real room, with furniture and other things that would ground it in an everyday ambiance rather than looking like an abstract studio backdrop. All in all, though, the overall idea didn’t feel quite right. Maybe it was overly complicated and still too vague, maybe it wouldn’t turn out visually striking enouhg, but I wasn’t 100% on board with it.

Sunday after Sunday have passed, a new decade has begun, until two things happened in the past couple of weeks: first, I found out just how good the light is in my mother’s sitting room while shooting an unrelated project (which I’ll have to keep under wrap for a while longer); then, I was given that lovely brass calendar, which I immediately thought would look very cool on some photograph.

Now, Gloomy Sunday: a calendar would recall the “day of the week” motif, with the sun embossed on this one tying it to Sunday specifically, so that photo in which I’d feature it might as well be Gloomy Sunday. Also, the “grounded in a real room” theme was pretty much the only other thing I felt like salvaging from the original idea, and I had that part cover. All I had to do was give in to the music and try to recreate its atmosphere through my modelling first and postproduction then, and at long last I had something to work with and take this photo.

Perhaps not the top priority in the grand scheme of the project (Better Than Love is still sorely missing, for instance), but I’m glad I got to give some love to this little forgotten song, and I’m very pleased with the image itself, so here we go.

Confide In Me

“I stand in the distance,
I watch from afar.
Should I offer my assistance,
Should it matter who you are?

We all get hurt by love
And we all have our cross to bear,
But in the name of understanding now
Our problems should be shared.

Confide in me, confide in me.

And I can keep a secret
And throw away the key,
But sometimes, to release it
Is to set our children free.

We all get hurt by love
And we all have our cross to bear,
But in the name of understanding now
Our problems should be shared.

Confide in me, confide in me,
Confide in me, confide in me.

Stick or twist, the choice is yours.
Hit or miss, what’s mine is yours.
Stick or twist, the choice is yours.
Hit or miss, what’s mine is yours.

We all get hurt by love
And we all have our cross to bear,
But in the name of understanding now
Our problems should be shared.

Confide in me, confide in me,
Confide in me, confide in me.”

[ Confide In Me – Hurts ]

Once upon a time, I took a photo based on Hurts’ cover of Kylie Minogue’s Confide In Me, which… was okay, I guess? I mean, the light was nice, the model too, overall it kind of did work out as a photo… mostly. The truth is, for starters, the focus was not that sharp. And the core of the connection with the song, which goes through Kylie’s hotline-inspired music video, lied mostly in the little phonebook my model and I found at the location we were shooting in… which isn’t easily readable in the photo, so it kinda falls flat. My mixed feelings about this photo led me to downright scrap it at first, while I was cleaning up the Inspiration Hurts folder on deviantArt, but I’m still sort of fond of it, so I don’t know, I put it back into the companion pieces folder and left it at that. And suddenly, Confide In Me needed a new visual representation.

The new idea came up almost at random, while I was listening to the song a few weeks ago. I realised the lynchpin for a strong visual rendition of Confide In Me should be the “keep a secret and throw away the key” line, which I could easily convey through the necklace I always wear. A key in this context would be connected to secrets, especially secret-keeping, confidentiality, thus the trustworthiness the lyrics try to sell to the listener. Placing it over the mouth doubles both as a promise to keep it shout, and as the act of swallowing the key so the secret is safe forever. Also, I’m smiling (which I rarely do in photos) and directly engaging the viewer to further affirm a sense of familiarity and reliability.

The basic idea I wrote down quickly, but it took me a few weeks to take the photo because first I desperately needed a haircut, and then I caught a cold that just wouldn’t leave me alone, so I had to postpone it all until I felt (and looked) better. The reason why I modelled myself for this photo is partly quick availability, partly the fact that I would never lend my necklace to someone else, even if just for a quick shoot. It’s part of me, so it’s only fair that the whole me would be in the photo along with it. Posing was a bit of a challenge more in an abstract way than with the actual shoot, because I have this preconception that I either can’t emote in photos, or look silly, awkward or ugly when I try. I actually freaking love the way I look here and I’m very satisfied with the overall result, so once again, I pushed myself outside of my comfort zone and it was totally worth it.
Now let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope for a cloudy day, so I can take the next Inspiration Hurts photo.

Matter Of Time

“‘It’s a matter of time’, you said,
‘It’s a matter of time’.
‘Figure out what is yours’, I said,
‘Figure out what is mine’.
And even if I pretended trust,
It was not hard to pretend.
And even if I gave up myself,
You’re not on what I depend.

As you wanted me to be right,
I preferred to be wrong.
And as your self-pity got control,
You supposed to get strong.
You might misunderstand me, dear,
But I had all that before.
Get control of yourself, my friend,
But you’re about to ignore.

Don’t have to comprehend where I belong,
Where I pretend to know if you’re wrong.
You tried to reach me on behalf of your errors,
A life getting serious.
You’re not as delirious to look in the mirrors
Of open decisions, so run.
Behalf of your errors, a life getting serious,
So look for where you have begun.”

[ Matter Of Time – Leandra ]

Oh boy, this photo.

So, remember how in 2015 I was going through an utterly disastrous moment, I had to really, truly acknowledge that I was clinically depressed because, left untreated, it was pulling me down, I had dropped out of university for good, I had no idea whatsoever where my life was headed and, on top of it all, that included photography because I had had a certain experience that had totally shattered my self-confidence? Yeah, I don’t have fond memories of that time.

At some point, after I reached my absolute low due to a wrong anti-depressant prescription that turned me into a zombie for about a month and a half (don’t worry, I’ve changed my therapist immediately afterwards), things started to get to a point where at least I was functional enough to tell myself, “Boy, try to figure your shit out; to hell with past mistakes and future anxieties, just focus on the here an now, to find a way to feel better, get stronger and then deal with the rest”.

While most of my life was still up in the air, at least I got my creativity back, my most important way to sort out my feelings, deal with them and feel like I could turn something productive out of my misery. I reshot the photos that had opened that can of worms in the first place, and went on to take a few others for my Inspiration Hurts and Morphine projects because I was approaching a once-in-a-lifetime deadline: I was going to have my hair cut short.

I was tired of wearing it long and it was one of the weights I felt I needed to shed if I wanted to go on. I was struggling with my image, with the amount of care it required (and when you’re that depressed, even basic self-care is difficult) and I just kept it tied all the time because it was an annoyance. I considered the idea for months, then, when I was feeling like I was at a turning point, I decided to do it. It was, as they say, a matter of time.

You see what I did there.

I had the idea the morning I was set to have the haircut and decided to go for it: I envisioned the song as a conversation between zombie-me and enough-is-enough-me, and thought of rendering it with old, long-haired me sitting on the floor on his self-pity party in the shadow, and new, short-haired me standing up confident and facing the light: the change, symbolised by the haircut, was the titular matter of time. So I set the tripod, took the long-haired photos and left it all there for the next morning, with the same light, angle, perspective and everything, for the short-haired one. I also carefully studied the styling so I’d wear two similar outfits but with slight differences, to signal a progression in the narrative. Basically, everything worked in theory.

The problem is, I was in a hurry and the first batch of portraits was so-and-so: the best one fit the idea perfectly, but I miscalculated the frame and had part of my arm cut off. When I tried to assemble the photo, this made the whole composition horribly unbalanced and, hey, the problem was the portrait I couldn’t get another shot at, so what to do? I just left the PSD sitting unfinished on my external hard-drive, and tried (and failed) to come up with an entirely different concept for the song.

Then yesterday, while I was doing some cleaning up, I opened it again and damn, I still liked the idea after all this time. So I went through the other takes and ta-dah, I found one that wasn’t as good, but whose elbow I could transplant to move the whole composition so it wouldn’t look awkward. At this point, I only had to wait for morning today, re-shoot the background (which, at this point, had become a bloody mess), blend the whole damn thing together and hell yes, I did it, I saved the photo!

It has become a matter of a long time at this point, but I’m glad I pulled it off after all, it’s a good reminder that even when you lose all hope, you can still dig you way out of a bad moment and do something out of it.

Only You

“When the night is young but it makes you feel much older
And you’re comatose each waking hour of life.
When the days go by but the darkness lingers longer
And before you know it life is one long night.

But when I close my eyes, I see you stand before me
And if you take my hand, I’ll leave it all behind.

Because only you can set me free,
So hold me close just like the first time.

Flashing lights illuminate your halo
And my pounding heartbeat thunders like a drum.
When we used to dance we’d never cast a shadow
‘Cause there was only you and me when we were young.

And in a sea of scars the first cut is the deepest.
No matter where you are, I’ll always think of you.

Because only you can set me free,
So hold me close just like the first time
And show me how it used to be,
Because only you can set me free.
Only you can set me free.”

[ Only You – Hurts ]

You know what they say, right? Make hay while the sun shines. So while I was at it, I brought home another Inspiration Hurts photo.
Fortunately, Only You doesn’t have as troubled a history as Wonderful Life: I listened to the song many times (it’s one of my favourites off Exile) so I came up with a concept quite early on; at about the same time, I came across this photo by Thomas Lavelle and decided to kinda sorta steal a page from it because that halo looked incredibly cool and something similar would fit the photo. And then I kind of left it at that for a while: I didn’t really have in mind any specific models for it, so I just waited around to get a girl, a boy and my camera in the same room. It just happened to be Jelena and me after we shot Wonderful Life.

Only You has a clubby feel to it, both in the music and lyrics, but I didn’t want to take that direction: I wanted to focus more on the emotional bond it describes, and represent it by playing up the sacred imagery evoked (because if I can put a halo in it, damn right I’m going to do that). So I pictured the boy character as some sort of atoner longing for the grace of this idealised, holy-like woman, not quite sure enough to be worthy of grasping it again. Jelena really looks the part of the angelic woman (besides being an incredibly nice person all around) so, besides a pragmatic casting choice, it was also a natural one. And I was available and already goomed to pose, so I went for it.
Visually, I played up the contrast betweem the two characters by juxtaposing a light outfit with a dark one. I also went for a strong colour wash to give the photo both a dreamlike and fashion-oriented look.
As I mentioned, I strongly took inspiration from an existing photo for the halo, but I hope I made mine different enough –  I positioned differently and had the rays start directly from the head – for it to look like a hommage rather than a rip off.

So there it is, Only You. Lately I feel driven as hell, especially in regards to this project; let’s hope that I keep momentum, because I’m really, really tired of waiting around.

Wonderful Life

“On a bridge across the Severn on a Saturday night
Susie meets the man of her dreams.
He says that he got in trouble and, if she doesn’t mind,
He doesn’t want the company.
But there’s something in the air, they share a look in silence
And everything is understood,
And Susie grabs her man and puts a grip on his hand
As the rain puts a tear in his eye.

She says,
“Don’t let go.
Never give up, it’s such a wonderful life.
Don’t let go.
Never give up, it’s such a wonderful life.”

Driving through the city to the Temple station
He cries into the leather seat,
And Susie knows her baby was a family man
But the world has got him down on his knees.
So she throws him at the wall, her kisses burn like fire
And suddenly he starts to believe,
And he takes her in his arms and he doesn’t know why,
But he thinks that he begins to see.

She says,
“Don’t let go.
Never give up, it’s such a wonderful life.
Don’t let go.
Never give up, it’s such a wonderful life.
Don’t let go.
Never give up, it’s such a wonderful life.
Don’t let go.
Never give up, it’s such a wonderful life.””

[ Wonderful Life – Hurts ]

When you talk about Hurts, Wonderful Life is probably the first thing that comes to mind: it’s been their breakthrough single, as well as their first video (which they then re-shoot more professionally), it’s legitimately a classic in their repertoir, an incredibly good soong by its own merits… it’s really Classic Hurts, if you will.

Indeed, when I first started listening to Hurts and tackling visual renditions of their music, I sort of had a go at Wonderful Life. Not in a deliberate, planned way like I did Silver Lining, but while I was dressed and dolled up for that one, I took a few more photos on the same location, as an afterthought, and one of them could retroactively fit loosely the song, what with the bridge, the industrial aesthetics that recalled the single cover, the gloomy weather and so on.

Keep in mind that at this point the Inspiration Hurts project as such wasn’t a thing yet: I only had plans for Evelyn besides Silver Lining, so I kept an “anything goes” approach to the rest of Hurts’ music, and this Wonderful Life photo just happened along the way. When ideas for visual renditions started piling up and I found mysel with a coherent project in my hands, things got a bit more difficult: at first I kept the photo and it even made it onto the photobook I gifted to the band (because I didn’t have that much material), but the song could give so much more visually.

See, while I plan the Inspiration Hurts photos meticulously, fine-tune the symbolism to best represent the songs and so on, I’m still open to exceptions and sudden gusts of inspiration; so when pictures like Locked Out Of Heaven, The Crow or Kaleidoscope happened, I happily kept them as part of the project even though I had other ideas about those songs (or none at all by that point). The thing is, those I consider good photos, which Wonderful Life 1.0… eh, just wasn’t. The light is dull, I look weird, the image isn’t overall particularly striking… I realised Wonderful Life deserved better the moment I decided this would be a long-running project, so I demoted that to one of “companion pictures” and came up with a specific concept. Which is the one you can see here, and we’re talking, like, 2011.

I mean, beside being one of the “hurtsest” songs of all, the lyrics describe very precisely the scene, so it’s quite easy to visualise it. It has got to be posh, melancholic, monochrome, with Susie holding the man of her dreams from jumping off the bridge: the photo basically shoots itself. And yet, eight years and three Hurts albums later, I still hadn’t shot it, what gives?

The thing is, I’m an idealist and I value friendship a lot. Of course, in this project I really care about, I wanted people who are special to me, not just random pretty nobodies. How cool would a photo like Wonderful Life be with two people who genuinely love each other, however platonically, and who’ve been there for each other time and time again? And that’s basically what’s been keeping not only this photo, but the whole Inspiration Hurts project on hold forever.

Because, I mean, when you’ve basically got three options for cities with either a river or artificial canals to pick from, it can’t be that difficult to find a goddamn bridge to put two people on and get it over with, can it? You can’t just spare one free afternoon in years for that, can you? Like, okay, at some point early on I spoke about one specific bridge in a specific city (which was within public transport reach, anyway), but I’ve just read my notes and they just say, “find a bridge”, so at some point I adapted my plans to any place that would suit. Just… let’s get it over with, shall we, it only takes one afternoon to hop on some public transport, get on location and shoot, goddamnit.
But no, of course not.

Anyway, some things happened that made me realise I need a big change in perspective. Yes, it’s cool for photos to double as big tokens of affections for my friends, but at some point I have to start prioritising my artistic expression. So now I just jumped at the first occasion to take this photo with a very beautiful friend who was in town and was actually enthusiastic about it all – imagine that. I can’t keep waiting forever.
Said friend, Jelena, I met through Giulia, who had already assisted me with I’m A Ruin and woken me up early in the morning to shoot Frozen last month. She’s my photographic guardian angel. So Jelena was in town, we discussed styling, agreed on a place and time, met up and took the photo. Easy peasy, really. I set up the tripod and framing, Giulia groomed Jelena, assisted me again by adjusting our pose (and making sure the passers by wouldn’t knock off the tripod and camera into the canal), and there it is, at long last, Wonderful Life.
And I’m truly grateful to both of them, because they hadn’t seen each other in a long time and could have just spent the afternoon on their own being the adorable best friends they are, yet chose to meet with me and take photos instead. Not that we didn’t have fun, what with Giulia’s theory that if I jumped from there I wouldn’t die, but surely would mutate and grow a few additional limbs.
See, it can be fun. All we have to do is will it and get it done.

Shade aside, the photo came out more dynamic than I could have hoped for. This is the moment when the male character is about to jump and Susie stops him, gives him some unexpected comfort and changes his mind. Putting one foot on the railing was a last-minute decision that drove it home, and Jelena totally nailed her pose too. I wanted the picture to look like it was shot on a gloomy, cloudy day, so I chose an hour when the sun was up but already behind the surrounding buildings to have neutral light, and did some trick with the hint of the sky to make it look darker, but there’s still a glimpse of light on us that gives more contrast, which I love.
I was scared that, after marinating for so long in my mind, the final photo wouldn’t live up to my expectations, but it’s the precise image I pictured, even better.
And I really should thank all of you who believe in me. After all this time, this photo really means to me what the songs says, and I want to say it to you too: never give up, it’s such a wonderful life.

Frozen

“Cold and risen from the grave,
Hidden years will tell no tales.
Now you seek what only heart can see,
Frozen in so many ways.

Drifting through the light inside,
A lucent image in the dark.
Fickle and dismayed,
Someone cast a shadow
Blurring all the pictures on the pages.

Hide the pieces, I become the sun,
Shining through what became of you.
Early morning, no time to lose,
Chills my heart and I come undone.

Quiet timeless silhouette,
Forgotten fragments of my dreams.
Pleasure and disgust,
Flashbacks out of phase,
Shining golden figure in the background.

Hide the pieces, I become the sun,
Shining through what became of you.
Early morning, no time to lose,
Chills my heart and I come undone.”

[ Frozen – Theatre of Tragedy ]

So, back in the day (like, 2013), I envisioned a sort of trilogy made of this image, Hollow and Illusions, each inspired by their eponymous song from Theatre of Tragedy’s final album, Forever Is The World. Even after years I haven’t figured out why I feel this songs are connected, but bear with me.

While I did Hollow pretty much straightaway, and Illusions had to wait one more year because it gave me a harder time figuring it out, Frozen took me six good years to take. The visual concept was perhaps the easiest to do, as the lyrics provide a plethora of distinct imagery to work with, but I was entirely dependent on weather to take the actual photo. I needed snow because it’s kind of in the title, I needed a monumental cemetery because it’s in the lyrics, the rest follows the lead of the other two photos with a mixing of portraiture and non-portraiture assembled on a hypothetical fashion magazine page.

As you can imagine, snow was the hardest part to work out, to the point it had become something of a running joke: either the winter was particularly warm and I wouldn’t get any at all, or it did snow in Trieste, but only while I was away in Sardinia for whatever reason. Damn, last year we got rain, strong wind, freezing cold, but no snow, until it snowed in freaking March, just the day after I flew to Sardinia to vote on the elections. How is that even possible?

Of course, trying to go and shoot somewhere else with more reliable snowfalls would have been tricky, because I would need to leave on a very short notice, go somewhere reasonably close to still have light to shoot (going farther would require staying the night at some friends’ with no guarantee to still find snow the next day) and, once there, get from the train station to wherever the closest cemetery was on an unknown transport system without even the guarantee that it’d work at all in adverse weather conditions. Also, I’d only have a vague idea of what I’d find at the cemetery, if it would lend itself to photographs, and so on. Basically, all the logistics behind this photo were a nightmare on so many levels, and part of the reason why I didn’t just give up is my friend Katia, who kept me believing that Frozen would happen, eventually.

Finally, this year I got lucky and it snowed the very night of my arrival from Sardinia to Trieste. I had half-given up by the time I went to bed because we were having the faintest snowfall and it looked like it wouldn’t stick, but the next morning my friend Giulia kept ringing me on the phone until I woke up and looked out of the window and I saw it: the snow had stuck! Truth be told, if she hadn’t kept ringing, I would have slept until all the snow had melted and I would have regretted missing this one occasion forever. So I got up, shaved, packed up, hopped on the first bus and there I was, heading for the snow-covered monumental cemetery complex of Trieste.

After some bad luck in the first one I tried (the caretaker caught me immediately and told me I could not take any photos there), I went to the biggest one, got as far away from any personnel as I could, took the snowscape photos, then set up the tripod and voila, Frozen was there! I can’t freaking believe it!

Naturally I had further trouble at home when my external hard drive died on me, but not before I recovered the watercolour title I’d prepared ages ago, so at least I had that silver lining. And at long last, the trilogy is complete!

Of course, I dedicate this to both Katia and Giulia, for believing in me and actively helping me complete the work. I believe true friendship is understanding just how much something means to your loved ones, and going out of your way to help them out!

Big Boys, They Need To Cry (Wings)

“You’ve been suffering,
Hiding your pain.
Unshed tears on the edge,
“Just water under the bridge”, you say.

Is it too late
To make myself a safe place?
I could not see
The dangers, the sacrifices
You were making.

Hurt you, hurt me,
Hurt you. Never meant to
Hurt you, hurt me.
I need to make myself a safe place
For you to cry, baby,
‘Cause sometimes
Big boys, they need to cry.

So we built you some wings
To help you to flee
From your demanding
Dark angel and me.

Is it too late
To make myself a safe place?
I went too far
When we flew too close
To our star.

It hurt you, hurt me,
Hurt you. Never meant to
Hurt you, hurt me.
I need to make myself a safe place
For you to cry, baby,
To cry, baby,
‘Cause sometimes
Big boys, they need to cry.
‘Cause sometimes
Big boys, they need to cry.”

[ Wings – Tori Amos ]

I feel like I should spend a few words on this photo, if only for how much work it took me and what satisfaction it brought me in the end.

So, Tori Amos’ latest album, Native Invader, flooded my mind with images, one of which is this one. I didn’t really sit down and think like I often do, I just visualised something and decided to go for it. This is why I didn’t really consider the whole metaphor in the lyrics when I came up with this image: what really got me about this song is the part about big boys needing to cry, i.e. get in touch with their emotions and fragility, which I find a very important message nowadays. Also, I liked the idea of trying to become someone’s safe place even if there’s been some disagreement and mutual hurting: it’s never too late to turn around and mend a relationship.
This is pretty much what inspired me: the eponymous wings are not attached to the protagonist so he can fly away as in the lyrics, but to the narrator, laid down as a shelter of sort so the protagonist can let himself feel fragile. It was a compelling image but I really didn’t know how to pull it off: nine years of Infernal Lords have taught me how difficult it is to find realistic wings for shooting, unless I turn to full-blown digital art.

And that’s pretty much what I did: instead of having actual wings, in real life or added digitally, I decided to draw them as if I were drawing on a photo with markers.
I came up with this idea while listening to another couple of songs: first came Bang and then Climb. I envisioned both as photograph-drawing hybrids, and then I felt like Reindeer King and Wildwood could work in a similar style, too. So why not Wings? So next thing I knew, I had a little series of visually homogenous works ready to be done.

I’ll be honest: this was a very difficult image to pull off. Not the photo per se which, once I did some location scouting, was one of the smoothest self-portraits I ever took, but the post-production was massive. I honestly didn’t even know if I was skilled enough to do it, as drawing is not my strongest suit. It took me three solid evening of work and I’m sure that someone with more practice with a graphic tablet would have done it in half the time and a tenth of the effort, but having drawn something that actually looks good, blends with the photo and is exactly what I envisioned is a massive self-confidence fix. Perhaps I really am capable of doing more than I think and am just too scared to try out!

Now, before this turns into the billionth unfinished long-term project, I’m not really making big plans about it. I’m not even going to do the whole album as some songs I really don’t like, or they just don’t speak to me. I’m just taking it as it is and doing what I can when I can.
On a side note about the title: Wings is going to be a work in my Inspiration Hurts series, so I decided to keep that as a subtitle while using the line that caught my attention as the main one. This is also going to happen if I decide to take the other photos I have in mind.