Basel and Milan based fashion photographer Valentina Pezzo has been shooting fashion for about five years now, after she decided to start shooting professionally back in 2007. “Since I was little I’ve run around with cameras in my hands, but in 2007 I felt that I had to select a direction. It was kind of logical for me that it would be fashion photography since it’s a bundle of everything I like. With fashion photography I love to put together the work of talented people with whom I collaborate.“
For her first shoot for Ben Trovato she decided to pursue Origami, and was helped by prop designers and assistants Fabio and Stefania to realize her ambitious idea.
“Everything in this story was built up around Origami,” the Italian photographer explains. “All those squared shapes of the Origami forced me to choose everything else in a pretty simple way. I was really inspired by all those Origami Lovers around the world, you can’t imagine how many figures you can fold with a sheet of paper. As I began to choose the Origami figures which would match for the story I came across blogs and videos explaining how everything worked. And so I noticed how big this Origami World is. After weeks having a good look at all these different Origami’s you see everything folded.”
Everything gets simple but expressive in the same way.
Model for the shoot was Cynthia B. from Fotogen, who Valentina seemed to be having a blast with: “- Cynthia was very professional and so funny to work with! We had around 0 degrees, but you can’t see any of that in the pictures. She was freezing and shivering, but when I had my camera in my hands she was instantly ready to work, like a pro is used to do. She’s a really cool girl to work with.”
Hair and makeup was done by Christian Merz, and the styling was done by Amanda Holzer. “It was the first time I worked with Amanda. I chose her because she has a great style and knows when she has to make things simple or not. The styling matched perfectly! I’m sure we’ll work together in the future again. What to say about Christian? I work with him over and over again. We’re a little team, I trust him and he never disappointed me. The Make Up and the Hair is always perfectly done. Fabio and Stefania, my prop designers did an amazing job! They worked quite over a week for creating all those little and big Origami. Both of them used to work with me in the past, and they always create wonderful props.”
Stylist Amanda says her goal with the styling was to get across the specific forms and lines in the overall picture of femininity. “Less is often more - we’ve experimented with that saying and we’ve gotten a lot of new multifaceted forms,” she explains.
Credits
Photography & Retouching by Valentina Pezzo
Styling by Amanda Holzer
Hair & makeup by Christian Merz
Model - Cynthia B. @ Fotogen
Prop Designers & Photography Assistents - Fabio and Stefania
