A series of stories and anecdotes related to our job. For more than twenty years we have portrayed “celebrities” for all major Italian and international newspapers.

Each time a new challenge, full of emotions and, sometimes, frustrations.
But the secret of a good portraitist is always to be able to transform difficulties into opportunities, trying to show a different and extremely personal side of the subject.

Lucio Dalla

When we worked with Lucio Dalla we were aware that the time we had could have been extremely short. But we never expected it to last only a handful of minutes.
The moment he showed up on set, extremely professional, nothing suggested that after a few shots he himself would declare himself satisfied with a peremptory “Okay, you have it!”, leaving us speechless

And when we say “a few shots” we do not exaggerate: just look at the contact sheet above. Nine images. NINE. Not one more. In those moments you ask yourself, “What if something went wrong? What if we don’t even have one in focus?”
The control of a shooting, however prepared, always brings with it unknowns.

It may happen that the subject presents himself without the slightest desire to collaborate, that it is not possible to establish the minimum relationship necessary to instill mutual trust as well as the technical failure that (damned) is always behind the corner. Small thoughts that always make you return home with a sense of relief when you realize that everything went as it should.
Nine shots, we said. Yet, we really struggle to discard even a single one.

When you look at them, you realize how incredible his face was and his expressions out of the ordinary. Not to mention the fact that the emotion felt in portraying Lucio Dalla, for a portrait photographer of my generation, is comparable only to the joy of a young football promise in front of Cristiano Ronaldo: we had in front of our lens the person who, through his words and his music, made us dream, reflect, fall in love and understand how art is something to which we cannot remain indifferent.
Just as photography.