Sorrowful Wife.
TALES OF IMAGERY #3
Welcome back to the Tales of Imagery series, and in this post I’ll be looking back at a photoshoot from 2014, titled Sorrowful Wife.
In the previous post I went over a little shoot I did with Layla in London, for that one it was just the pair of us, a quick bit of location scouting, and one outfit. This shoot was a contrast, with a variety of locations, outfits, and a team of five, which was required as for a few years I had been gathering locations in my mind for a shoot with a particular kind of look. I’ve shot in certain locations before and not made the best of them, and I definitely wanted to make the best of them this time (whether I did or not is certainly up for debate, but I’ll let the results speak for themselves when we come to that). Throughout the years I was working as a photographer, I was lucky enough to be living in Brighton, which is just a short train journey from central London (if the trains are running), and despite my lack of a car at the time, this proximity to the capital allowed for me to nurture my on-location shooting with one of the most abundant cities in the world in terms of picturesque backdrops.
Such scenes deserve to be utilised properly, as I have mentioned, and it wasn’t until I had met the right model and stylist that this particular shoot began to come alive in my mind. A few months prior, I had worked with the lovely Madeleine Uitz, recommended to me by another model who I had worked with previously. At the time, we shot twice before in a similar manner to that in the previous post, just the two of us. However, we had both wanted to shoot again since then, and ideally, she fit the part perfectly for the shoot I had in mind this time, especially when combined with the styling talents of Shirly Piperno (who I had worked with on another shoot some months prior too), and who, using her stylist ways, managed to find us a fantastic array of outfits and designer pieces. After getting Madeleine and Shirly on board, the next thing to do, after going over moodboards and confirming the locations, was to find some additional help. I have found that models usually do a fantastic job with their own hair and make-up, but along with a whole day of modelling, it’s a lot to think about, and having additional help for these things brings the professionalism of a shoot up another level. So, we put the word out and managed to find two fantastic collaborators, with Ronnie Woodard as our hairstylist, and Irene Wang as our makeup artist.
Once everything was in place, on a brisk but sunny Sunday in May of 2014, I jumped aboard an early train to Victoria station and made my way from there to Madelenie’s flat to meet up with her and the rest of the team. This is something that would have seemed far too social a thing to do in years previous, and now it has been so many since, I almost can’t imagine setting off for a big shoot these days either, but I do miss the creative camaraderie of making images with a group of likeminded people. Once I got there, I prepped my kit, while Shirly prepared the outfits, and both Ronnie and Irene got Madeleine ready for our first look. Once we were all set, we headed out and hopped on the bus to our first location. We had rather more locations in mind for the shoot than we were able to accomplish unfortunately (along with outfit more changes), but as often happens, time got away from us on the day. Tube maintenance and slow busses compounded the issue, and in the end we only managed to get four of our looks shot, ending the day around Westminster. Despite not quite getting everything we wanted, we wrapped the shoot very happy with what we had captured, and after filling up with some food and having a quick scan through the images on the back of the camera, we parted ways, and I made the journey home to begin the editing process.
During this time of my working as a photographer, there seemed to be a myriad of magazines around to which one could submit bodies of work for publication. Those that printed their magazines physically were always the priority when sending work out, but these were fewer in number, and more often than not, shoots would solely be published online - but getting published at all was hard work, and I was always grateful for the websites and magazines that liked our work enough to put their name to it. For this shoot, I did my usual of blasting it out to all the magazines I knew, and it ended up featuring in DeFUZE magazine, which, like almost every publication from the time, no longer exists. Good thing I took a screenshot of their website at the time, eh? And while we’re on the topic of the shoot, it was named in part due to the mood of some of the images, but also because I was listening to the Nick Cave song of the same title at the time. My brain is a sponge of limited capacity it seems. Good song through - give it a listen while you scroll through the rest of the images from the shoot, which, as with the previous post, I have freshly reedited with a more honest approach (only removing unwanted hairclips and birdshit for the most part, rather than smoothing skin, which seems so passé these days).
More from this shoot can be seen over on my wesbite, along with much of my fashion editorial work. And here’s to the wonderful folk who brought this shoot together, Madeleine, Shirly, Irene, Ronnie, as well as those responsible for creating the garments we used, Josefine Hansson, Ella Cervjakova, Bershka, Marjan Pejoski, Dang Thuy Duong, Zara, Forever 21 and Topshop. Cheers to the long dead Christopher Wren and David Laing as well for their architectural skills in creating St Dunstan in the East - cheers lads, good backdrop, shame about all the lunching bankers.
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