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!