Virgin of the waiting room

An update from the Signs of Life files.

Waiting room of community heath center, west side of Chicago.

Break down music

Today I did a little favor for a Under the Radar Magazine and shot the talented R&B musician, How to Dress Well, AKA Tom Krell. His latest album is releasing today and the European press is all aflutter. You can listen to his soulful ambient falsetto here.

Musician, How to Dress Well. ©Saverio Truglia

A silver spoon art walk.

Last month I wrangled 10 of Chicago's premier art dealers to be at a photo shoot for a CS magazine story about the very elite and VIP, Chicago Gallery week. Absent was honorary chair, mayor Rahm Emanuel (though it's safe to say he wasn't invited)  We shot at Wright Auctions on the west side using their inventory of mid-century modern wares.

L to R: Carrie Seacrist, Monique Meloche, Paul Gray, Scott Speh, Dan Devening, Adrew Rafacz, Rhona Hoffman, Jim Dempsey, John Corbett, Ellen Alderman

 A shoot like this with so many art world illuminati requires a light touch.  Naturally they'd want to talk and ignore the fact that there's a camera on them, so I let this happen. We brought a little wine and kept the shoot loose and unconventional. 

I knew many of these folks from my early days as an artwork photographer. I cut my teeth shooting ads for Art and Auction magazine of David Hockney flower painting installed beside  Giacometti bronzes for Paul Gray, and scrolling Jenny Holzer texts for Rhona Hoffman.  Those days are long past but like from my father's restaurant business, learned a great deal from these folks about how to treat your customers and run a small business.

No guts, no glory.

Occupy Shakespeare

Guy Fawkes, better known by the masks worn by the occupying 99% is credited for the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 to blow up the House of Lords. A true domestic terrorist, though back then simply a rebellious bloke whose attempt to make a point was foiled.

Marketing image for Victory Gardens production of Equivocation.

I did my historical research to art direct  and shoot this new image for the upcoming production of Equivocation,  at Victory Gardens Theater. The play was written by Bill Cain and is directed by the incomparable and always surprising, Sean Graney. 

 In London in the year 1605, a down-and-out playwright called Shagspeare (yes, it’s him) receives a royal commission to write a play promoting the government’s version of Guy Fawkes’ treasonous Gunpowder Plot. As Shag navigates the dangerous course between writing a lie and losing his soul, or writing the truth and losing his head, his devoted theater troupe helps him negotiate each step along the way.
~Victory Garden's

Photography and art direction: Saverio Truglia
Victory Gardens: John Zinn, Tim Speicher
Actor: Marc Grapey
Wardrobe: Aly Amidei
Retouching: Tim Blokel
Hands: The Witches of Intern

Learning from Failure

Failure is part of success and you can't have one without the other. Failure is also the abbreviation for a new play  produced by Victory Gardens Theater opening this fall.

Failure: A Love Story written by Philip Dawkins traces the lives, loves, and mysterious deaths of the Fail sisters, immigrants to Chicago in the early 20th century. It's a dark comedy that I'm looking forward to seeing as directed by Seth Bockley. The script is so great. 

I recently shot the advertising image for this play with some of the cast. It required historical research, vintage styling  and magical illusions; all of which I love. This one successful project had me thinking other projects I do for profit vs those I do for passion. About when the process is amazing and fun, and contemplating how it could always be so.

This image is an outtake from the advertising shoot for Failure: A Love Story

A wonderful aspect of shooting imagery for theater is that the play itself often does not yet exist.  As we're often working months outside of rehearsals, the production design has yet to be established. All we have is a script. Some would find this infinitely frustrating to get an assignment without so much as a sketch, though it's an opportunity I'm rarely given in consumer advertising shoots.   

In theater I get the time to study, explore and parse a script, arriving at essential concepts that illuminate the heart of the story.   To honor the story in theater is vital because  a "story" is exactly what we're selling.  As an art director and photographer I can borrow from cues in the script to reflect and create metaphors. The story becomes my creative guide. I compress and rearrange the beginning and arc with the end, to make a new moment independent of the play's timeline, yet all about the heart of the story.

I find that most advertising, especially print doesn't honor its story because it often doesn't have one. Maybe its story is borrowed from the broadcast version of the same campaign, or from a  brief written for the client but both are only reflections of a story, not the story itself.  The best creatives understand that a good brand story takes time to develop but once done well, there becomes infinite ways to visualize that story.  It makes the director or photographer's job more fruitful when engaged in the narrative being told.  There's often too little time or care in the advertising process for this to happen correctly, leading to rip-offs and duplication of existing ideas.

 In the era of instant gratification and shorter attention spans, the best advertising creatives understand that now more than ever, knowing your story is the heart of good communication. Every ad competes with distractions like scrolling status updates in the palm of our hands providing us with LOTS of instant gratification, but precious little story and no context.  What if we bothered to make things that are both instantly gratifying while long lasting enough to engage our intellect? Something that actually offers an idea we didn't already know about the world, in context.  To do this, you need more than a headline writer adept at witty tweets. We need conversation, thinking, and time for process by inspired artists and creatives.

Art direction and photography: Saverio Truglia

Victory Gardens marketing team: John Zinn, Tim Spiecher

Wardrobe: Aly Amedai

Hair: Katarina Jestrovic

Makeup: Laura Weathersby

Retouching: Tim Blokel

Swingin' in the Wind

I have a slight discomfort with heights. It's not debilitating though it just takes me a minute to acclimate to anything over 15 ft,  not to mention 150 ft.  After a while my inner ear cooperates and I'm good.  This was put to the test when shooting print ads for Navy Pier with the agency TwoxFour.

Navy Pier is an amusement park and convention center jutting out into Lake Michigan from Chicago.

The whole project was shot over a couple days at Navy Pier on the rides with some additional shooting around the city for backgrounds.  After many dozens of rotations, have an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of  the Wave Swing and Ferris Wheel.

The view from the Ferris wheel is truly spectacular but let's just say that it's not a good place to be in a freak wind and rain storm at night... 

Agency: TwoxFour
Creatives: Aaron Weinstein, Adam Von Ohlen
Buyer: Ruben Gomez