Luckily today’s new issue of style magazine is on the shelves (the monthly man zine insert of the corriere della sera newspaper) with one of my editorials therefore I am forced to negotiate with a hall of mirrors to bring to an end my blogger’s promises.

The editorial on this issue, I shot it a few months ago and it is of the russian violinist natasha korsakova in a suite of the four seasons here in milan. The concept of the shoot was to treat a very serious and very composed classical violinist like a rockstar: images shot with direct flash, in a luxurious room which is “messy” and the model acting in a very sexy/ironic/deconsecrating attitude… in short in a very different manner rather than your usual photographs of a classical violinist…

Natasha was very good, falling completely into the character of the movie in which I incorporated her, following me without a sound and (I am convinced) having as much fun as I had: well done natasha!

Here are some of the images taken from the magazine, plus one that wasn’t published but that I particularly liked:

milan loves fashion

If yesterday’s was rushed you can’t imagine today!

What got into my head to do this blog marathon, today I’ve been in the city left right and center, I haven’t eaten, I haven’t drank I haven’t peed, and I could eventually talk about who I’ve met and who I’ve seen today and there would be something to talk about, but then I’d feel like I’m gossiping and I do not think its nice so this infinite phrase seems to never end and it seems to me that I do not know where I’ll end up so I could talk about the photo reporter fun I had this evening for the “milan loves fashion” event in duomo square here in milan and all the infinite chaos of being backstage but at the end everything went smoothly and I could also talk about the fact that I talked to linus and that he’s genuinely nice and likable and he told me he saw my photographs of BB on F. and that he really liked them (thank you!) but then it would look like I am showing off so it’s better I don’t write about that that so I could get all serious about it and say something about grazie neri shutting down or I could beat a little more about foreign photographers and draw up a nice  long list of those who are on italian magazines at the moment, but it is something that has been done and over done, or I got it! I could cite an aphorism by flaiano that I like so much “they eat shit and then complain if they find a hair” but what does it have to do with this………..uffffff……. A deep breath and…

You know what?!? It is better that I do not write this post!!!!

I promised and I maintain, one post everyday this week. Although this, I admit, I am taking away: it’s very late, I am all over the place and I have a thousand things to do.

I will throw your way a few suggestions of things that I’ve liked lately:

-a book: “siberian education” by nicolai lilin

-a movie: “whatever works” by woody allen

-a photograph (two!):

-a lina scheynius e lauren dukoff

-an album “insides” by jon hopkins, qui

-a fun website

-a relaxing website, or innervating depends from who’s point of view

-a creative website

-a very interesting personality, miranda

And, last but not least, an hebrew proverb: “choose well your enemy, because it is him that you’ll become”

Everyone has the followers they deserve, and I like to think that whoever is following me, my works and my blog is somebody fucking cool…

Today, I didn’t know which fish to catch, I was dragging myself between duomo square/the inauguration of the gastel e il boscolo hotel and I was trying to live up to the promise I made of creating a daily post, then antonio wrote to me, with whom I am not  personally acquainted, he decided to complete one of my photos with a few words, which seemed to me well written and coherent to the story I wanted to tell when I photographed that editorial.

The photograph of which antonio told the story is the one above here and his words are these:

“Why? You ask me why?

Why? Wasn’t it true that we were going to cuddle in our reasonable conversations about  sharing and smoothing our skin with beautiful things? You were saying it like that, like that you told me, look into yourself. Sorry what was that?

I am not turning around. Shut up.. I am talking now!

There, I am tired of your cribbed existentialism, of your neurotic doings, of staying in our comfortable warmth of the “we are enough”. I am tired of your masked nihilism of a repressed genius, staying only inside your lounge on which it is about to rain. Perhaps I am also tired of this piece of shit city in which all there is is rain.

Shut up, let me speak, because I-have-to-speak-today. I feel like puking. I hate your being too intellectual and braniac, your fears, your confused decadence during your morning outbursts. I wanted to fly, you have only devastated me, with your encumbering I am here, your work, your fake I’ll-take-care-of-it-don’t-worry. Sorry what, you say I am weak? You dare say that my nervous breakdowns are pure fragility and that I have to sit down? I am not going to sit down, I am not going to calm down. Actually you know what I’ll do? I am leaving. I am leaving even if cement blocks would fall out of the sky! They would surely hurt less than your absurd being calm and reasonable and comprehensive with your look superior to what you find yourself against, and that it has been the background, always, to our most difficult moments. I cannot deal with this no more. You are a liar, a constant liar. With me and with yourself. I am leaving… my life cannot be this one, like this, without a window”

By antonio pintus

Well done antonio!

Thank you!

settimio

When we speak about public administration, let’s say it, it is rare to waste compliments, especially if the political part we speak about is not in line with our ideas.

The factiousness is wasted: if they are on our side everything they do is marvellous, if they are not it’s all on the contrary.

I want then, without any factiousness, praise a service the municipality of Milan has by now inaugurated a couple of months ago, which is really going well: the hiring of bicycles, named BIKE MI.

It is seriously cool, done, organized and maintained very well.

First of all you have to go on the website and subscribe. A year costs 36 euros, which includes the use of a bicycle for a maximum of two consecutive hours. A card is delivered to your house, after a couple of days that you have subscribed, with which you can take the bicycles, amongst all the many stations scattered all over Milan.

The bikes are well made, robust and with a very efficient maintenance service.

I strongly suggest to everyone to subscribe, even those of you that maybe don’t even live in Milan, but that you come ever so often during the year.

And last but not least, the technologic cherry on top of the cake: the iphone application which lets you know where all the stations are and even if there are bicycles available.

What do you want more?!?

P.S. I did not vote for Moratti

So I start here, as promised in the previous post, a small posting marathon: for the whole week then I will try (to celebrate the new blog!) to do some posting (isn’t it maybe the perfect verb?!?) at least once a day.

I have so many things to tell, like the nice movie in original language I watched today (ok, it was: “whatever works” by Woody Allen) or the pleasant evening I spent in Modena Friday night.

I feel like starting with something more “institutional”: the fashion talents the awards.

It is a competition that wants to reward all the protagonists of a photoshoot: photographers, hair and make up artists, stylists, designers and models.

Said this like it is cold seem like bullshit, let’s admit it, but the people involved, the sponsors and the possible outcomes are instead serious and concrete.

For example already serious and concrete seems to me the possibility, for the first ones to sign up, of shooting during the imminent fashion week in Milan inside the Canon stand, where I will also be.

You can find all the information here.

Little by little we get closer, by an uphill road, towards the new website.

From today we have the new blog, here in front of you.

It is a strange sensation, like moving in a bigger and nicer house but underneath it all thinking that it was better before.

I have an immense array of new instruments, which I didn’t have before, and it all looks too much to me!

I can post pictures and, eventually, you can click on it to see a larger format, like this image below here (an image you may have seen in the past, taken in South Africa with me always ready to beam up into space…), or even, if I want to show you a website I like, I can simply do this.

This really modest blog, after all, has existed since 2003. Thanks to my previous assistant AG which back then (more or less when internet was still a fossil and modems where emitting screeching sounds before connecting <or maybe not>) I asked him to have on my site, which already existed from the year 2000, a place where I could upload, which was more for the clients, my works. Alessio told me: let’s make a blog! “a blog?!?!” I replied “what is that?!?!” (in milanese dialect).

He then explained it to me, and I started this small useless adventure which between one thing and another made me produce, to be exact, 756 posts.

I am very happy to have done so, it is a diary of a thousand travels, thousand meetings, thousand adventures and misadventures. Honestly I am above all happy to have done it for myself; and with this spirit, the one of an adolescent who is writing in a secret diary secured by a tin lock, I keep on writing with much pleasure, the pleasure with which I am able to turn around and live again what I have experienced.

In the “far far away” 2003 the blog had a primitive technology, for a long time I couldn’t and didn’t want comments to be made, the photographs couldn’t be enlarged, no links could be embedded in the words: now we have that kind of technology, and they are all here, in this new blog.

I would say we have to celebrate all this in a way that it only seems right:

By writing a lot of posts!

Next week, from Monday and for the whole week, I will be writing one post per day

Welcome!

settimio

As I am subscribed to the journalist guild (in a way, let’s say, totally unjustified) a little magazine called tabloid is delivered free of charge to my house, which is the editorial instrument of the journalist guild of the Lombardy region.
It is a well laid magazine: its reading time plays against the ikea catalogue and mickey mouse comics during a very important time of my day, when I’m sitting on the bog.

Thanks to modern technology you can view here the latest issue here
If you make the jump to page 26 you will find an article on an interview with Grazia Neri, the italian princess of photojournalism. It is an interesting and very well written article (truly, without irony), which talks about the current difficulties of photojournalism and high levels of reportage in Italy and throughout the world.
The newspapers and art directors which, because of ignorance and superficiality, use photojournalists in an ignorant and superficial ways are righteously criticised.
Perfect.
Marvellous.
Well done!!!
Pity that, to illustrate this beautiful article, they sent (I presume) a blind friend of the director to take the picture/portrait of Grazia Neri: you can see the image here above or better in the PDF.
A photograph which is not only horrendous and without any vague taste, I am not even saying photojournalistic, and I would even add holiday like, but it is even out of focus and badly exposed: the only visible subject is the person in the middle of the photograph in middle distance, which, let’s just say it, doesn’t fit at all.

Well done!

Compensate with a great photojournalist: Antonin Kratochvil

I fear all the jobs that revolve around the fashion world are seen and read in a very distorted manner: we all know the one that says “I am a photographer” is the one that sells film rolls in Alassio, as well as the one that shoots porn in Prague as well as the one that shoots the Coca Cola campaign in New York, and says “I am a hair and make up artist” the one that owns a salon in Cervia Marina, as well as the one that does the hair to chinese brides in Milan as well as the one that has to find the new look for Madonna. And, last but not least, even more are the possibilities of the one that says “I am a model” and lets avoid the details here…
True model and true Top is Bianca Balti.
I did a very fun editorial with her, which comes out today on FIRST, the monthly magazine by PANORAMA, all dedicated to what is italian.
For once an italian photographer and an italian model!
Some of you might remember a little battle I fought on the subject… therefore obviously it was my great pleasure to participate with this magazine’s issue, which is very nice all around…

And here you can watch the backstage video of the photoshoot!
http://video.corriere.it/?vxChannel=Spettacoli&vxClipId=2524_f592163e-98b9-11de-b8d4-00144f02aabc