Fifteen Years with Giampaolo Sgura: Anatomy of a Creative Partnership

Digital Area had been open for about 3 years. The early phase, the one where any company stabilises and stops asking itself whether it will make it to the end of the month, was coming to an end. Having already 10 years of prior professional experience, working with the biggest names in world fashion photography, one name stood out to me like a rising star. Extraordinarily talented, a hard worker, and, at least by reputation, friendly, kind, easy-going. In short, the perfect client for us, who were growing. I’m talking about Giampaolo Sgura.

But how to meet him, how to convince him that Digital Area would be the right partner for his career? Like many photographers, he already worked with his own retoucher. Knowing the dynamics, knowing that a photographer-retoucher team is solid and rarely breaks, I resigned myself to doing what I’ve always been best at: retouching everything to the maximum, trusting that the quality of my work and of my retouchers would speak for me.

“Try Matrix”

In that period AI didn’t exist, search engines did what they could: everything happened the old way, by word of mouth. As luck would have it, many of the professionals I was already working with, and who had known me since the Pixelway days, also moved in Giampaolo’s orbit. Monica Alesina and Edoardo Marchiori were among them. At the time, both worked at Glamour Italia. During a trip to Rome, Giampaolo mentioned he was thinking of trying another retoucher. Both told him: “Why not try Villa?”. Monica, to be precise, said “Try Matrix”, the nickname she’s always used for me, because of the long leather coat I used to wear.

The die was cast. That cover story, an advertorial for Luxottica, was entrusted to us. I still remember it as the job to which I owe nearly all of my career with Digital Area.

The first phone call

Within minutes of delivering the first round, I got a call from Giampaolo. He said: “Andrea, I really don’t know what to say to you…”. My blood ran cold. “Oh god, I’ve messed up everything, I knew it…”. Instead, the rest of the sentence was: “There are a couple of little things to fix, but for the rest it’s all good”. Imagining my relief is hard.

It wasn’t easy to convince Giampi that Digital Area would be perfect for him. A coffee downtown where I spent all the names I had ever worked with wasn’t enough. I waited, hopeful.

A few days later, on his own initiative, Giampaolo showed up at my office. He arrived on a Brutale, the motorcycle I adored, being a rider myself. An athlete with a fearsome build, super kind, and so precise in his comments on the photos that he immediately reminded me of the greats I had already worked with. That first meeting gave me the start of a wonderful collaboration that continues to this day.

Trust as a shortcut

The foundation of our work together is trust. Like any creative pair worth its name, each does their best to set up the other. He’s never used the usual line “we’ll fix it in post”, and in return we’ve always given our best on every job, big or small. We grew together, knowing we could count on each other, never taking advantage of that trust and never relying on the fact that a symbiotic team like photographer-retoucher is hard to replace.

I don’t think Giampaolo has ever changed the way he shoots because he works with us, except perhaps knowing that everything would be handled according to his taste without having to ask or check every single detail. I, on the other hand, learned an enormous amount from his taste and from his ability to adapt to any situation. Both of us felt more secure on our professional path because the other existed.

3am, from Tokyo

Only once in these 15 years did I fear I’d really messed up, and heard Giampaolo truly angry. We were working on a global Dolce & Gabbana campaign, one of those gorgeous ones with the Sicilian family, Bianca Balti and Monica Bellucci (the original one, not the later campaigns). We had agreed with the stylists on the colour direction of a couple of images out of 30, and everyone was happy. Giampi had left for Japan to shoot several Vogue cover stories.

At 3am the phone rings. The photographer was, to put it elegantly, “rather upset”. Nothing he wanted was right, the colours completely off, and we had to patch it IMMEDIATELY. Confused by sleep and by the fact that I couldn’t understand how it could have happened, I get up, make myself a coffee, and head to the office. Yes, at 3am, because even though nobody had asked, the situation deserved an immediate fix.

I’ll spare you the hours of panic between emails and calls with him in Japan, and get to the point. I didn’t understand why he was telling me the colours were completely off, and I was trying to adjust them following his instructions over the phone, between one Vogue shot and the next on set. Until the lightbulb moment: “Giampi, are you looking at them on your usual Mac?”. And him: “No, on the laptop, why?”. Me: “Check the Photoshop settings and tell me what ICC profile you have…”. “Oh sh……”.

False alarm. But what a scare.

Outside input

Giampaolo never thought of asking Digital Area for exclusivity, because he’s too smart for that. Anyone who works only and exclusively for one client, in the long run, becomes anaesthetised. They stop bringing new ideas to the relationship. Quality inevitably declines, and on both sides less and less attention gets paid to the fine details.

As in a marriage, outside input from friends and family is essential for a long, lasting, and fruitful collaboration.

Fifteen years later, we’re still here, shoot after shoot.

PS. This post was written by a human.