Guilt

“When I go
You will be someone new,
You will see the stars come out,
You won’t feel the pain I’ve caused at all.

‘Cause someday
I must face up someday
You’ll be better off on your own,
So just let me go.

Under the bridge
I’ll carry this guilt
No more.
So under the waves
And out of your way
I’ll go.

When I’m gone
You will find someone new
And he won’t lie or torture you,
And you won’t cry for what you’ve lost at all.

And someday
When you wake up happy
You will thank the Lord that I’m gone,
So darling, be strong.

I’m under the bridge,
I’ll bury this guilt
Forevermore.
So under the waves
And out of your way
I’ll go.”

[ Guilt – Hurts ]

Honestly, the idea for this photo is so old I don’t even remember when exactly I first got it. It may have been as soon as I listened to the song for the first time, really, which would make it ten – ten! – years old.

I know for a fact, though, that I already had it by mid-2015, because I happened to visit Sagrado, a small town not far from Trieste, and when I saw its old, steel bridge across the Isonzo river, I was in complete awe of it and thought it would be the perfect location to shoot that photo. Which means the idea was already formed. And since it hasn’t changed at all since then (almost, we’ll get to that later), it means it’s was already quite finalised even then.

The problem is, if Stay has taught us anything is that specific locations mean you have to rain-cheque that idea and wait for the right chance. While Sagrado can be reached by train from Trieste, and the bridge is within walking distance from the station, the logistics were still a bit of a nightmare. You see, I needed someone to help me shoot it if I were to take a self-portrait, since setting the camera on a tripod and leave it unsupervised on a pebbly river bank was out of the question, not to mention making sure I was in frame and everything. And those were the years where I was quietly but steadily made to feel like my photographic ideas were becoming a burden to certain people close to me, so I wasn’t comfortable pressuring anyone to take a trip to help me.
True, come 2016, I did have some hypotetical talks with my friend Giulia (who eventually helped me on Wonderful Life), and while she would have been glad to come along and assist me, fitting everything in our schedules wasn’t exactly easy. So another three years passed without me really pushing the matter, and then the early Twenties happened, with all the delays and roadblocks they brought along while I was stuck in Sardinia till mid-2022.

Cue Marko and me becoming flatmates. We made several trips to Ikea to buy some stuff for home, and to go there from Trieste we not only had to pass through Sagrado, but actually cross that very bridge. Which obviously reignited my interest in the project.

And while I had initially envisioned Guilt as a self-portrait, there was really no reason at all why it had to be. I might as well have Marko model for me while I chilled behind the camera, cutting the overall work by a good two thirds. He agreed and, while going to Ikea again, we inspected the river bank to see where we could best find access to the shore underneath the bridge, and as soon as we were both on holidays I checked the weather for cloud cover and we went there to shoot.

Now, aside from the photo going from a self-potrait to one of another model, the only major change in the overall idea is that, for whatever reason, I was expecting to shoot facing upstream on the left bank of the river, whereas we found out the right bank was more accessible so we shot facing downstream. But that didn’t really impact the aesthetics or composition at all.

The original idea was always a monochromatic piece with murky sky, the bridge prominent on the background (because it’s the most strikingly visual part of the lyrics), with a perspective that would make it stand tall above the model, who would be wearing a long coat and walking away from it. Simple, yet effective.

To be honest, though, I think part of the reason why I felt the need to take a break this year was that I couldn’t bring myself to choose one take to work on, let alone go through with editig it. Perhaps I was afraid that the photo wouldn’t live up to a decade of expectations. Which it did: save from the change in model, it’s literally plucked out of my mind from 2013. But much like Pallas, perhaps it needed a bit of mental distance for me to get over myself and truly appreciate my work here.

So there we go: one of my favourite Hurts song turned into a photo I really like, after I nurtured this idea for a long time. It feels rewarding to finally put it out here.