I was delighted when Etro contacted me with news they were preparing a coffee table book incorporating work, ideas and imagery in an attempt to produce a monograph that would represent this famous family and the beautiful clothing they make.
In the past I have produced two world- wide fashion campaigns for Etro and considering the company has existed since the sixties I was happy to see my work was featured so prominently in the book.
The book itself is beautiful in it's binding, printing and embroided cover with goldleaf lettering. There are specially folded inlays revealing panoramic artwork and even a board game that can be unfolded. The Vogue Italia writer Renate Molho does an incredible job of navigating through the immense wunderkammer that is the amassed work of the Etro family and putting it inside of a beutifully bound and printed book.
They featured a lot of artwork from the two campaigns. The summer campaign was shot in "superstudio" Milano where I had 6 classic cars to play with.
The follow up shoot was a trip to miami to photograph people in the streets, on the beach and out and about.
On my return it was to the darkroom where I printed up my black and white portraits and then using the tried and tested process of "paper, scisors and glue" I went about composing the studio fashion shoot together with the documentary imagery producing a stack of artwork that was shown all around the world on billboards and magazines like Vogue, Elle and all the rest.
The following season they booked me again. Apparently I was the first photographer to be booked for two consecutive seasons and responsible for the image campaign for ETRO for a whole year.
So this time I asked for a train!
They agreed to this and we found an old fashioned steam train complete with carriages, a dinning car and a menagerie of specialy trained animals to be incorporated in the shoot. We had a gigantic beautiful white goose, a lionhead rabbit, dogs, cats, fish and a mallard duck. The shoot lasted for three days and was a LOT of fun. The follow up documentry shoot was a week long ride on the trains taking us around Europe particularly the East with its creepy stations and somber neverending train tracks. It was a suitable winter contrast to the sunnny Miami imagery.
The final campaign, again made with the same organic tecnique- with handmade prints and scissors and glue went around the world to great aplomb.
Some of the campaign imagery can be seen on my jason mcglade photography facebook.
Thanks Kean, Veronica and Jacapo for the nice greetings! It was a privelage to work with such an incredible creative family.
