Vogue magazine session

Drying black & white copies & tests in a manual laboratory

To understand the reason why of this session we have to take a brief trip to January 2011. Back then, I was living in London and those days were a great influence to my both personality and photography. That entire month of January was depressing, the weather was awful, freezing cold days without seeing sun for weeks turned me much more introspective into myself. Walking and discovering the city was the escape of all of this. During one of those afternoons I popped in a Vintage Magazine shop just off Piccadilly Circus. There was a dingy basement inside full of sixties fashion magazines and remembered some of my favorite UK photographers. I ended up finding a UK Vogue magazine from April 1969 with a great report of the sixties model Pattie Boyd taken by photographer David Bailey. Back home that night I was thinking of doing something similar. I realized I owned the perfect equipment for this type of fashion work. I well remember me sitting inside my London kitchen writing some ideas with a steaming cup of tea in hands.

6X6 digital print

The idea of doing a session about fashion was running round my head for years. I supposed I wanted to find the right person for something like this. In March 2015 I was gladly invited to take part in a documental about one of my heroes' life, photographer Tony Keeler. During ‘Who's Tony Keeler?’ interview I met a beautiful interviewer with a stunning glancing. It was a shocking experience, amazingly pleasant. I instantly knew I wanted to work with that girl. 

6X6 analogue print

Again, I forgot about the 'Vogue session' some time after I decided to do it in Summer 2016. I knew I have the right 6X6 camera with portraiture lenses for this type of work. I wanted to reproduce as real as possible the way those photographers worked in the 60’s, using the same medium format camera they would use in those days, reproducing as real as possible their developing & edition techniques. So I invited Gabriela to come over my ‘little white flat’ to do this session. She agreed and suggested some jewelry for the shooting. I meticulously arranged the session on a fine September afternoon with film and digital at the same time. I’m extremely pleased with the end result. Another dream has come true! To be continued…

'Setting the scene' in digital. Nikon D700 with nikkor 50mm

Technical data:

Hasselblad 500 c/m with Sonnar 150mm (4)

Kodak Tri-x, Kodak Portra both films exposed at 400asa. 1/250-125 at f.4

Littlewhiteflat Photo Studio, September 2016