MYLÈNE FARMER and MARINO PARISOTTO VAY

Mylene worked with Marino Parisotto Vay in two occasions. The first photo session for the Innamoramento album (cover and booklet).

They met in Miami USA in 1998 and used a beautiful nature around Key Biscane to produce such memorable images. Some photos will be taken on the beach during the day, others at night.

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The photos came out so well that that have been used for the Mylenium Tour poster and program as well as for the covers of the singles L’Âme-Stram-Gram and Je te rend ton amour .

Second shooting took place in February 1999 on the roofs of a large Parisian hotel next to the Champs Elysées then, which continued at night in the streets of the capital. A few of these photos were first published in the “Intant-mag” fanzine in 2004

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about Marino Parisotto Vay

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Marino Parisotto Vay is an Italian photographer born in 1967 in Canada. Official website: http://www.marinoparisotto.com/

Before the Victoria’s Secret angels started crossing the catwalks wearing glamorous pairs of wings, the Italian photographer Marino Parisotto Vay had already created dreamlike images with top models dressed as angels for campaigns of great lingerie brands, like La Perla and Wolford. He also launched, in the 90’s, the book “The Sky over New York”, with a Big Apple populated by angelic creatures.

The photos by Parisotto take us to a mysterious universe of eroticism and sophistication, inspired in the Renaissance painters and sculptors. He defines his images as frames of an imaginary film, where the models become characters in a story. “Motion creates Emotion”. He often says about the theatrical “mis-en-scene” of his work: “I love movement. For me it’s what creates emotion.”

Marino Parisotto Vay was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1963, son of Italians, and grew up in Venice admiring the classic beauty of the paintings and sculptures that would influence his work later.

At age 18, he moved to Milan, and began working as a model to pay for his studies in the university of economics. But his taste for art soon led him to fashion. He was the creative director of an advertising agency specialized in fashion, and at the late 20’s, became artistic director of Givenchy.

Parisotto is one of the few photographers who can turn advertising into art. Many of his works exhibited in museums and galleries were originally made for advertising campaigns and calendars. Among the brands that hired him are Armani, La Perla, Wolford, Rochas, Wella, Audi, Swarovski, Baccarat, Campari, Lavazza and Remy Martin.

One of his specialties are the lingerie campaigns, due to the elegant sensuality of his photos. Since the 90s, he has been working regularly for La Perla brand. He also made some anthological campaigns for Wolford, as the one with angels over Greek ruins by the sea. The scenarios came directly from the Cinecittá studios in Rome to a beach near Livorno, Italy, where the campaign was photographed.

In 1997, he published his first book “Senso”, with great success, followed by “The Sky Over New York” and “Tropic La Perla”, among others. He photographed two important calendars, the first in 1998 for Italian coffee brand Lavazza, with black and white photos full of sensuality. And another in 2008 for Campari with the actress Eva Mendes, in extravagant seaside settings, another trademark of his work.

Parisotto received two Gold Award for Photography, International Art Directors Club.

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The photos of Mylène on a cage resting on the ocean are directly inspired by similar old photos by Marino Parisotto Vay which had interested Mylène.

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INTERVIEW WITH MARINO PARISOTTO VAY
Fanzine Instant-mag 2004

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I started my career as a model, while I was studying economics. Very quickly, I finished my modeling career, and when I left university, I started working in an advertising agency, as a manager until I was 32 years old. I have been a photographer for about ten years, but my initial training was in business management. I have a particular style. 

My models seem to dominate their environment. I really like to tell stories in my images, like an author, like every artist. I have a personal vision of the world, very specific. Like a painter, you can adapt colors and proportions to a photo. I have a particular vision of the beauty of women. 

I like that women appear very sensitive and very sexy, and that they have harmonious and aesthetic movements. And it’s these women that I like to put in my stories because for me, that’s beauty. In any case, it is a beauty that I want to expose, even if I admit that thousands of women are beautiful.

 

I’m more than a photographer because I feel like I’m more of a storyteller than just a fashion photographer, like a cartoonist. 

Sometimes I use lenses that are custom made for me. But the effect rendered on the photos is above all the product of my gaze. The lens only renders what my eye sees. It’s just a tool to put my vision on paper. 

Whether it’s through retouching or a custom-made lens, it doesn’t matter. If I had to define my style, I would say that I have a romantic vision of life, full of emotions. 

I like to put emotion and sensuality in my images. I am no longer just a storyteller, but a storyteller of emotions.

I met Mylène for the shoot I did in Miami in 1998. The shoot was done entirely outdoors, not in studios. I always work like this. I obviously prefer to shoot outdoors, definitely. The session lasted two days, in Key Biscayne, in an environment that allowed us to explore surreal atmospheres. That’s why we used elements that allowed us to reinforce this surreal atmosphere. Objects such as the cage, the ladder or the ball are symbolic. They represent different states of mind, with which everyone can identify. Mylène had a very precise idea of ​​what she wanted and we were totally on the same wavelength. She called me because she knew where my creativity was going, and what kind of images I could make. 

I had already used the cage on the water in other photographs (the staging of the cover of Innamoramento takes up that of one of the most famous shots of Marino, [Editor’s note], that Mylène knew. She had the feeling that it perfectly represented a part of her personality. The atmosphere of the shoot was very relaxed, very calm, everything went very well.

I also remember another session with Mylène, which we did on the roof of a large Parisian hotel, near the Champs-Elysées. At that time, I was on a spiritual quest, so I wanted to get a lot of my role models in that direction. And I wanted Mylène to appear like a bird. 

That’s what we did on the roof. That day, the weather was really bad, it was very cold. I also remember that Mylène was not at all afraid at the top of the roof, that she was not afraid of the cold. Anyway, when she takes photos, she does whatever it takes to make them look good, she’s very collaborative. She goes as far as the photographer can go. Above all, she is very active, since she knows her body and her face perfectly. She is an actress. She knows her moves very well, and she works hard for it. She’s really cute, adorable. I met her in Paris since the shoot. We had a very nice discussion about the photos. I have very good memories of her.

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