Portraits of Patrizio di Marco, former CEO of luxury fashion houses Bottega Veneta and Gucci, and former board member at Dolce and Gabbana, at the Gucci offices in Milan during fashion week. These were taken as part of an editorial for which Gucci was the main feature of the title with these images both accompanying the feature and also as the title cover image.
The shoot was organised alongside an interview with Patrizio; in total I had approximately 12 minutes with the CEO before and after the interview was conducted. Arriving early to the Gucci headquarters in Milan, I was afforded the opportunity to recce both the courtyard at the heart of the location and also Patrizio’s office which is where the portrait of him seated was taken. Photographed in landscape orientation, this image was cropped to portrait orientation and ran as the cover of the title when the article was released. This part of the portrait session lasted four minutes.
Close up and personal- this tightly cropped portrait of Patrizio di Marco, presented with the crop exactly as it was taken, was photographed in the courtyard, to offer variety in addition to frames taken in Patrizio’s office, after the interview had been conducted. This second part of the portrait session lasted six minutes.
This third portrait was taken, again in the courtyard at the Gucci offices, while goodbyes were being said before dashing back to the madness of men’s fashion week in Milan. For the duration of the goodbyes, which for those keeping count lasted a further two minutes, I continued to take portraits of Patrizio but this time instead of posed images, they were candid shots taken surreptitiously with my camera at my hip. I got lucky with this image; my first three candid frames (this being the second frame in the sequence) were all centrally aligned to a smiling Patrizio with both hands in his pockets; none of the other subsequent frames came close. Such is the nature of candid photography.
