Ep 020: Maximilian Virgili
A SHOT: To start, can you describe this photo that we’re going to talk about?
MAXIMILIAN VIRGILI: So this photo I took on a trip to Italy. I went to Tuscany for a job for Zeit magazine in Germany. On the picture you can see a grandma, a nonna actually in Italian, and she sits at a table, and she smokes. We just finished eating, and there was a lot of red wine. We just had some wild boar because the story was actually on wild boar and how it’s really popular in Italy. The meat is actually really nice if you do it well. That was the point of why we did the story in Italy. Especially in Germany, you don’t eat that much wild boar, even though we have a lot of wild boars in the wild, in the woods. The story was about how Italians know how to cook wild boar and how it’s a delicacy there.
How interested were you in the subject matter going into this? It’s kind of like one of those stories that isn’t the most obvious.
I’m really into food in general, so I love to cook as well. So I was generally interested in the story and also into Italy because my dad is Italian, so that was a perfect assignment for me.
So build the scene around this image for me. How did you come into contact with this woman, and aside from just the end of [a meal], what’s happening here?
The editor came with me who wrote the story. We had a fixer, and she connected us to this grandma who makes wild boar. She’s been doing it for ages, and she’s also been doing it for big festivals — they’re called sagra — so she was kind of like an expert. Her son, who is next to her — you can see his hand in the picture — he also lived with her still, and he was also hunting for wild boar, so that was kind of interesting. The fixer suggested, “Let’s go there and spend the day, and she will cook lunch for you, and then we can start asking questions and you can take photos. You can take photos of the lunch, and you can portrait her.”
We got picked up in the morning to drive up to this small road, and then we went up all the way to her house, which was beautifully located. She had a rose garden. It was just such a nice place and a small little house. Tuscany is beautiful. Everywhere is pine trees and flowers, and it was so hot, as well. I think it was July 2019. So we came there, and we already — like the day before — we actually had so much wild boar in the evening because we went to this big wild-boar festival. She’s like, “I’m making lunch,” so in Italy, it always means you’re making tons of food, like a lot.
It was so funny because she was a real character. We came in there, and she immediately told us what to do. She’s like, “Don’t stand here. Put this away.” She was a really sweet lady but really confident and self-assured. She reminded me so much of my own grandma, my own nonna, because she’s also Italian. And she had the passion, the love for the food, and she also actually worked as a seamstress. My nonna is also a seamstress. So she had a love for fashion, and she immediately showed me all her dresses she made. And she was so proud of them.
How does an assignment like this come together?
I know the photo editor from Zeit magazine. I actually did an internship with Zeit magazine as a photo editor. I think it was in the start of 2014 I worked there for six months. So I knew the photo editor. She actually knew that I was really into traveling. My personal work is mostly travel work. After I worked there I actually started doing more travel work and also food stuff, posted a lot of stuff on my Instagram. We just stayed in touch, and she also knew I liked going to Italy a lot. Once a year actually I go to Italy. So I have a couple travel stories from Italy in recent years. So i think she just remembered, and she knew I had this connection to Italy. We had a couple of other appointments in Germany as well, like in Berlin one and then one at a festival as well. We had to drive there. It was like these three days in Tuscany and then also a couple of appointments in Germany.
Before you’d taken in frames on this day, what did you hope to make with the photos you were going to create?
Normally when I do portraits, I don’t really have a planned vision. Maybe a couple of poses in the back of my head, but I always need to meet the person first. And it sort of evolves from the conversations, vibes I get from them, and then I decide what feels right to do after a while. But with her, it was really different because I immediately knew I had to get a shot where she smokes, for some reason. For me, in an instant, it sort of defined her, in a way. When I came into the kitchen, she smoked, and then she started cooking, but she stopped, and then she smoked again. She’d pour some red wine into [the dish] and I thought this has to be the picture. Because, in a way, it looked so classy, sophisticated, but also at the same time, so down to earth and approachable because she was sitting in this really small dark kitchen, and she smoked like some sophisticated fashion icon. And the funny thing was also that she immediately told me to not photograph her while she was smoking. That was the first thing she told me. She was like, “You can take pictures of me, but I don’t want you to photograph me when I smoke.” So for some reason, I take that and like, “Okay, sure.” You know, I don’t want to push anything, but in that particular moment with her, I was like, “I have to get that photo.”
How do you get to the point where she’s more comfortable with it then? Like, in this instance is she telling you, “No, I’m smoking don’t take this picture.”
I started photographing her when she was cooking. Also, she had a little cat that was strolling around, and she hugged this little cat all the time, so I was taking pictures of that, and I didn’t really talk about the whole smoking thing. It was hours actually before I took this photo. I was trying to not think about this too much and not give her the feeling, “Oh, I want this picture while you smoke.” So I just casually took pictures because I knew we were having lunch; we’ll be here for a couple of hours, so I don’t need that picture right away. We had some wine. Everyone had wine, and then I photographed the food and everything. And I think after a while, she kind of got more relaxed, and then at the table I took a lot of pictures with the flash, and she was always asking, like mocking me, “Why do you need so many photos?” I tried to explain to her, “We need a lot of pictures because I tend to edit a lot, and sometimes the focus is not good.” So after a while, when she also had a couple of glasses, she was like, “Okay, whatever, you can do whatever you want. I don’t care anymore.” She was kind of pissed off but not really. She was like, “Well, whatever, get that picture” because she sort of knew. I didn’t say, “Can I take that picture?” But she sort of knew I’m moving toward taking that.
It’s interesting. It’s almost like she knows that that’s the definitive way that she looks.
Yeah, when I think about it in retrospect, I have that picture of her, and I kind of pushed it because I thought it was the best way it represented her. But then at the same time, she never saw that. She also doesn’t really know it was published. She’s telling me to not cross that line, but I felt the urge to cross it, to fully paint that complex picture I had of her, and I thought the smoking just had to be part of that somehow. And also I knew it would be a good picture.
So how do you feel about that, having this image of someone that that person might not totally be okay with?
Honestly, that’s the hard part because I put so much of myself into that picture because I want her to look that way because it’s my photography, but then it’s also like she as a subject needs to be represented the way she wants to be, as well. They’re kind of two visions that collide. I think it also defines the picture because I think there’s a lot of energy somehow in it. I can also feel that in that picture because I sat there, and it was an emotion I felt. She used the plate as an ashtray, as well. If you look at the bottom of the picture on the right below the wine, there’s ash, so she ashed on the bread. It looks really messy. It looks like she doesn’t care, but there’s so much more about the whole scene that maybe some people don’t really see, so it’s such a contradiction in my head because on the one hand I really like the picture, and I really like how I got to that picture because I’m kind of proud I got it, but then on the other hand, she might not have been so happy about it. That’s what I always feel when I’m doing portrait work. It’s like, where do you cross that line. I mean, sometimes it’s super intentional, right? You have someone you portrait, and then you think I really wanna paint that picture of that person, and I’m overstepping just to get that, you know, maybe it’s sarcastic or ironic or something then someone can relate to that, but on the other hand, it’s just so hard to tell sometimes as well.
Let’s talk a bit about how an image like this fits into the rest of the story as well. What other sorts of images were published with this story?
We traveled around a lot, so I took a lot of pictures of food. [Zeit] started with the opener. It was a stuffed wild boar. There was a little butchery in a small village, and they had a huge stuffed wild boar in front. I lit it from under so it looked a little bit aggressive and a little bit dangerous. And then we had a little picture of some people eating at a sagra from above and then a little bit of scenery, like a pine tree in the morning. I got up one time at 5:30 because the light was so beautiful. We stayed at this house, and there was a little garden, and it was such a beautiful purple light. They went with that to give a little feeling of Italy. Then more food and a couple of images from Germany from a festival. It’s called Wacken. It’s a huge heavy metal festival. We met someone who’s selling wild-boar sausages there and then also a hunter from Northern Germany, who also hunts wild boar. So we had a little portrait of that.
Did this image get published with the story?
Mm-hmm. I had a couple of others from her, but the editors and photo editors immediately said, “Oh, yeah, we’ll definitely go with that one.”
How do you think an image like this fits into the narrative you wanted to create when you’re going to all these different scenes and kind of piecing together the story you want to be telling?
I’m not sure I thought about the narrative in particular while I was taking that picture, to be honest because that was such a different scene from the other ones. The other ones were… Especially when we went to that festival, the motives were clear, so I was like, “Okay, I have to take that picture of the food festival, so we’ll get some surroundings. We’ll get some food on the table. We’ll get some portraits of these guys putting out the plates,” but with her, I didn’t really know — also the editor didn’t really know what he would get from her. I think it was also kind of last minute that they got her for the story. So this was like, “Okay, just drive there and see. She’s just going to cook for you, and you’ll just see what happens.” While I was there I was actually just thinking about how to represent her in the best way I could. But it’s interesting that you say because I thought it actually fit the rest of the narrative pretty well. It stood out but also marked this event with her well because the story, it changed so much in the course of the text. We were in Tuscany and then in Germany and then Northern Germany and Southern Germany. This was kind of like a highlight. It fit pretty well in the whole sequence.
You were working alongside the person who was going to be writing the story, is that right?
The author, yeah.
When you’re working like that, what is the dynamic between you two? I would imagine an image like this whether or not it’s included somewhat maybe depends on whether or not the writer ends up including this woman in the story?
Yeah, that was kind of, not a problem, but that was kind of bad luck because we got a lot of people in Italy, and there was also this one guy, which I thought there was this beautiful light, and we were in the woods, and he had this little restaurant. He had such an interesting face with wrinkles, and he had this scar here. We had five minutes, but the light was perfectly lighting him from the side. So I was like, “Well, just stand here. You don’t have to do anything.” He also had glasses, and the light reflected so beautiful. He didn’t know how to pose, but that was perfect because he just looked into nothing. I thought it was such a beautiful picture, but in the end, it didn’t fit the edit because the guy was just never in the story.
That’s actually a good point because I talked a lot with the author while we were traveling, and he also tried to paint that picture for me of the whole text. We had to concentrate on different parts. It’s hard to put that narrative together when the assignment goes on for days or weeks. It was five or six appointments in the course of two or three months. You always have to look at the pictures, before you go to the next assignment, from a couple weeks before, like, “Okay what did I do? What did I miss? What do I need?” And then the author is constantly changing the story in his head probably as well in the couple of weeks because maybe with this woman, with this grandma, he didn’t know what she’s gonna tell him. Is this gonna be worth something for the story? And I was just lucky she was in there.
So in addition to working as a photographer, you also work as a photo editor. How do you think the responsibilities of a photo editor affect how you would approach taking an image like this?
I definitely think that my background as a photo editor 100 percent helped me to understand, to grasp the story, to know I need this or I missed this, so I have to go back at the next appointment and get that because I think it works pretty well with this point — all these different thoughts that you do when you sit down with the art director or the author when you’re doing photo editing. With the magazine I work at doing photo editing, we have so much discussion, like, “Oh, this picture is perfect, but then we definitely needed this one, and he missed that one, or she missed that one.” With this particularly image, I’m not sure if I thought about if this would be perfect for the narrative. But I think I felt it needed to be in the edit because the other pictures were pleasing, in a way, if that makes sense, because I had a lot of pictures of food and really nice looking sunset sort of stuff and all these little villages. So I had no rough contrast. Also I didn’t really flash that much. So I had the feeling this could be a good contrast to the dreamy Italy feeling of… Not, like, commercial, not at all. It wasn’t commercial, but this image you have of Italy, I wanted to break that a little bit.
So what’s your setup for when you’re taking a photo like this?
That was actually pretty basic. The room was actually super dark. It was so hot, so we wanted to eat outside, which I thought was beautiful because the sun was shining and everything, so I had to change a little bit ’cause then she’s like, “No, no, we’re going downstairs.” I was like, “Okay, can I see the room?” And it was full-on dark. I have to flash. There’s no way around. So I set up a small light. When you look at the pictures, it’s at the back right. So I was in front of her, and on the back right, there was a little flash. Yeah, I think that’s it. It was like a small Godox AD200. Simple setup. I didn’t really move it, and she actually wanted to sit somewhere else, so I was like, “No, could you sit here?” because I really wanted the focus on her.
So what are some of the challenges of working in a situation like that? You’re in a small room. You’re in a dark room. What do you have to be thinking about with that?
That’s a hard situation because beforehand if you plan a lot and if you say my imagery tends to be like I don’t use any flash or anything, then it’s a problem if some situations just fail and you have to improvise. So I always try to be spontaneous. I have a small kit. I’m not really perfect with lighting or anything. I’m far from that. I know how to use some little flash on camera and sometimes the flash on a tripod. I also do work a lot with natural light. But I had the feeling in this situation it was good because I added the flash imagery to my photographic approach because I had the feeling it needed to be somehow a little bit more flexible. So with this situation, it was kind of the perfect example. They told me we will eat outside, so I was like, “Oh, perfect, I’ve got a ton of natural light,” but then I went down to this room, and I was like, “Okay, there was no way.” But I knew I had this flash. So this was the setup I go to if something’s really dark or whatever. So I just set it up, did a couple of test shots while she was still cooking upstairs. Actually, the plates and everything looked really fun. It felt pretty obvious I had to flash. But then also all of the stuff was really colorful, so I was like, “Okay, this is perfect,” because then everything pops out really well. So it was a good situation overall.
What do you like about the quality of light in this photo?
I actually like the way everything is lit because it’s so sharp. Her wrinkles and everything come out really well. I really loved her hands, as well. She had such an interesting pose with how she held the cigarette. I love that every detail is visible on that one. I love how evenly she’s lit. Everything is visible that is interesting to me.
At first glance, this image feels more chaotic than the type of photos I would normally associate with you, like you’ve kind of said. Your photos always feel very precise in a way and very sorted, a little bit softer. How have you looked to compose the elements that are within this frame and how you’re framing her within the shot?
I’m actually pretty uptight with composing. I [crop] my pictures pretty heavily as well. So in that one, it was really important to me to get the bottom of the table, which makes up the picture as well. If I went really close on her with just the face and the cigarette, it would have painted a totally different picture of her. So I really needed that context of the plates and the table cloth with the little hearts on it. It was kind of cute, but then also you have the cigarette package on it, which contrasts the cuteness. But then also a bit of messy sauce on the plates. For me, I wanted to get that image of that cooking, enjoying nonna drinking red wine in the middle of the day but then also this classy lady, which she was. I really needed that bottom of the picture to give that context. I think [the photo] was actually a bit more wide. Some of the stuff which was on the right… I think there was a salad bowl or something. There was a lot of green in there, as well. If I see something like that, I cut that out because I think this just puts away the focus of the picture. Colors can add to an amazing composition if you want it, but then it can totally ruin a picture as well, if it’s like on the side of something and you don’t want it. People, their focus would go down to this color because it maybe doesn’t fit. So you lose something in the picture. I’m always trying to put my viewer in that position where I want him to be. So with her, I probably tried to block out everything that… Because it’s also as you said, it’s kind of a messy picture, but I needed some focus points.
So thinking about you being fussy about what you want to be in the image, how okay were you with her son’s hand in the bottom corner?
Actually not that happy, if I think about it. But that’s probably because I had a couple of shots of her with the cigarette, and I thought that one was the best because her stare… I love that she didn’t look into the camera because I didn’t want it to be a posed picture. I really wanted to use that picture. I think I remember the [son’s] hand, and I was like, “There’s not much I can do” because if I [crop] more, then she’s not in the center anymore. If I cut from the bottom, then all the stuff we talked about that was important for me, it’s just left out. So I just had to live with this. I think it doesn’t ruin it really, but if I could get rid of it, I probably would.
Her attention in this photo is away from the camera. What do you like about her engagement in this image?
I like that she’s not engaged. She’s aware that I’m photographing her, for sure. I photographed her all the time, but I really like in that moment she’s not focused at all. When I think back, I did some other portraits up in the kitchen of her, and she always stood there. She tried to pose and stuff. And then when she’d smoke, she lost that, and I think that was also the point why she told me in the first place, “Don’t photograph me when I smoke because then probably you’ll get that picture of me where I don’t pay attention, and I don’t want that image of me taken.” Maybe it’s also because she was proud or something, which I totally get, because you don’t want yourself to be maybe vulnerable or whatever. But I think in that particular spot where she is now, I love the stare with the huge glasses. And I love that she just lost this, lost the pose, lost everything. She just stares, and she’s thinking something. I totally don’t know what, but it lets me think about, “What is she thinking about? Is she comfortable with this?” There are so many questions that arise when you look at her that I probably wouldn’t have had if she was engaged with me in that particular moment because then I would be like, “Okay, now she’s just lookin’ at me trying to maybe pose the cigarette in the right way if she wanted me to take a picture with the cigarette.” But this is just totally off.
So you mentioned that you have a personal family connection to Italy. How does that connection affect how you might approach making an image like this?
I’ve been in these situations so many times. In Italy, it’s loud at the table. Everyone is grabbing something. Wine is always at the table. Screaming, laughing. So much fun. Food is such a culture, so important, family, everything. It’s interesting because I just knew how to behave in that situation, so I step back a little bit but just let it flow. I drank some wine with her. Everything was so relaxed, and I was like, “Oh, this is so good.” We ate and always made the compliments because that’s what you do, as well. You say, “Thank you so much for this food. This is so good.” And it was getting funnier and more relaxed, and we’re talking and everything, with the fixer because she translated. I understand a lot of Italian, but I don’t speak. That was also a barrier, but then I could understand a lot what she told me. With my grandma, it’s the same. She tells me something, and I know what she says. And then I have to sometimes just say, “Mm-hmm,” or “Ahh, yeah, yeah,” and I know a couple words. But I think it also helped. It definitely helped to be… maybe also to ease everything, like to say, “Don’t worry. It’s fine. We’re in a safe space,” because she wasn’t used to being photographed. It was her house. An author, a photographer come into her house. She was kind of nervous at first, too. So I was trying to get that away from her by making compliments and eating and enjoying, and the way she saw that, I think she also like that I enjoyed it and that I was having fun, and I think that led to her saying, “Just take this picture of me smoking. I don’t care anymore.” That’s also why this picture means so much to me because I finally got the picture, but then also I know she was fine with it.
Looking through your photos, I see a lot of tables with drinks or plates of food, whether they’re empty plates or plates that are filled with food, and I really like that this is an element that you return to with photos. In general, what does having a meal mean to you?
Oh, so much. In general, food is so important for me because I think it connects so many elements that are important to me — friendship, family, even having food in the first place, being able to be in that position to eat every day and have everything I want and cook everything I want. Then also sharing these experiences with other people and connecting. It’s such a culture thing as well, right? If you go to different countries, if you have a language barrier, food is something that you don’t have to speak. You just eat, and the other one eats, and then you can look at yourself and then be like, “Mmm, oh, my god, this is so good,” and everyone understands. It’s the language everyone speaks. It’s emotion. It’s pure emotion. And that’s also what I want with my photos somehow, someone looking at them and feeling something and having that feeling that I had when I took that photo and someone is looking at it and maybe responding with his feeling to that.
Why do you think you’re drawn to documenting a table top with a photo?
With photographing, I’m someone who’s totally based on his instincts. When I travel, I have my camera. I don’t really take pictures when I go outside [at home] a lot. I have to be focused. When I’m traveling, I have my camera with me all the time. What happens is I go somewhere, and it’s just sparks. So I know something hits and strikes me when I have that feeling that I totally can’t describe. It’s like some electricity or something in my head, something that lets me hesitate for a second. It doesn’t mean it’s the most amazing picture, but I do have to go back and take that picture just for myself because I’m kind of crazy about it. So I think it has a lot to do with emotion. My work is based a lot on emotion, on my emotion. So with the food, it can translate to that. Whenever I eat, or whenever I’m with friends and I have plates and maybe the sun hits it… I remember one picture I took in Crete where I had food with all my friends. It was such a perfect moment. The sun was perfectly reflecting on all these plates, and we had also glasses of wine and stuff. I felt so happy that I wanted to photograph it. It happens to be food or it happens to be tables with food probably also because colorful textures. Glasses are always really interesting because they break light in a different way. I think tables and glassware and plates and food are always a combination of so many interesting things for me in terms of emotion, graphics, colors and textures that I’m just drawn to it.
I like that you mentioned that you’re not the type of photographer who just carries around a camera with them. What does travel open up for you that taking pictures closer to home doesn’t?
I know that’s also sometimes a problem for me, but I do think it’s that cliche thing of the strangeness, the things you don’t know yet, the interesting parts you don’t have at home. I do think when I travel, everything I see or everything I take with me I want to have the possibility to capture because when I do travel I’m always in a different state, so I don’t want that to be lost for some reason. I did a project at home as well. I’m shooting in Germany for sure, but it’s more like, “Okay, now I get out and take my camera,” and I know I want to do that project, and I know I have to photograph that. So it’s more planned. And I think when I’m traveling, I’m much more emotional. There’s so much more coincidence involved, which is such an important part of my art, things that just collide. I walk around and come across that corner, and — I don’t know — someone is standing there looking somewhere in the perfect light, and it’s like, “Okay, this is perfect.” And also then things I don’t know about in that country just hit me, too. So that’s like a combination of, “Oh, I see something,” which is coincidence, and then maybe also the colors are different than at home or the sun is just hitting it so differently. I’m really drawn to colors and textures.
So I think it’s a combination of different things, but the most is probably just being able to freeze that emotion that’s just pure and raw and sort of also like an explorer, like a child. You could probably say I’m just drawn to something I see, and I wanna see how it looks on the camera. Because a lot of things that I publish I actually just, in that moment when I took that picture, I thought it was the greatest picture, and then I come back and sort through the images, and it’s totally different. Editing is such a huge part to me. It changes so much when I come home and I see something, and then I also connect them to an emotion, and then it sort of comes to life for me. This always happens when I travel because it’s just something that I can’t really influence. I’m just lost in that. I can’t influence any of that. This is pure. It’s just getting out and seeing and then feeling and then just click.
It started by just trying to figure out what I really like. I started taking pictures and taking pictures while traveling, and I didn’t really know where it went. By doing that, at first I didn’t really realize. And then after a while, I got drawn to these things, and it’s like, “Oh, yeah, interesting, I’m shooting a lot of windows. I’m shooting a lot of tables,” or “I’m shooting a lot of trees.” I didn’t really consciously shoot these. After a while, I just looked at them, and it’s like, “Oh, this is a thing,” but it’s interesting that while taking the picture, it doesn’t really get to me for some reason.
So to close our conversation, what’s something unrelated to photography that’s been feeding you creatively lately?
I listen to a lot of music. Actually music is something that always… There’s my piano in the back, if you can see it. I played the piano when I was little for 15 years. So that was a thing that came before anything else. I played classical music, and that was always a huge part of my life until I was 20. Then I switched somehow to photography. So I think that music or playing the piano is something that really comes close to photographing for me because I just lose that tension, and I just go with emotions, like pure emotions.
And playing the piano is also… All these chords and stuff, I used to memorize them in images when I was little. That’s something that actually crossed my mind recently because I never really thought about that, but I think that’s a connection to my work now as a photographer. I memorize really quickly. Like, I couldn’t read notes at all. I was so bad at reading notes, but once I just memorized it: I tried to picture them, the chords and everything, as parts in pictures. So I just remembered so easily, and I didn’t use any notes anymore. For ages I could play complete pieces without the notes because I just remembered them with images. It was like this man playing with his children with a football in their garden — like really simple images were like sounds.
I think that’s such a big inspiration creatively for me, playing the piano, revisiting those old pieces. Many of them I forgot, and it’s so hard because I’m really bad at notes, so I can’t really play them again, but the things I remember and I play them, it just puts me back into that space where I was when I was young. And that boosts something in me. It connects. It makes me feel good, or sad. But that’s something that boosts my creativity because it just lets me be in that space where I can just let my emotions flow, and I need that so much, this unplanned stream of emotions, because I’m sometimes too tight, too trying to be perfect with myself, so that just lets me loosen up, and it just sparks something.
Interviewed on May 2, 2021.
(This transcript has been edited for brevity.)
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Maximilian Virgili