Capri

Capri
Capri, Italy - 2024

La Fontelina is the most celebrated beach club on the most fabled holiday island in the world. On that basis, it must be a special place and indeed it is. Nestling in the rocks and sea pools in front of the Faraglioni sea stacks, it casts an immediate visual spell on any visitor. If the protagonists in Game of Thrones had a favoured place to eat, it would be located here.

I had not been to La Fontelina before 2024 because I had never been to Capri, but on my first visual exposure to the venue, I recognised that it was aesthetically without equal.

Doing a photo shoot here requires many skills in addition to those employed when operating a camera. Most crucially, I needed to win the support of the owners Gaetano and Mario Gargiulo. Their generational success story meant that they needed neither a cash backhander nor some lame pictures for their Instagram account. Every day throughout the European summer they run and own one of the hottest tickets and they rightly focus on the constancy of excellence in their service rather than catering to film makers.

I met Gaetona first as a customer and then it became my sole purpose in life to win him over and let me shoot a DY typical tableaux at his most beautiful club. Capri is to Neapolitans what the Hamptons is to New Yorkers and I hoped I had one trick - my image of Diego Maradona from Mexico 1986 - up my sleeve. Maradona is adored in Naples for bringing the local club the league title in 1987 and I figured that a gift or two of my well-known images could help my cause. I was right - and yet again I owe Diego.

And so it was, early one morning this summer, I assembled a cast in La Fontelina. I knew the deck chair formations and the movement of the sun long before that day, as this was not a shoot to make mistakes on. I had sensed some empty space in front of the southerly stack and worked with local fisherman to sort that out, but I was also conscious of the need to fully showcase the famous parasols without blocking any of the leads. The scene was choreographed for those with familiarity, and I was conscious of the need to elicit rich memories.

In my mind a photographic tableau is all about the space between the people and the props and La Fontelina certainly gives you every chance. I like this photograph a great deal, but I care more that Gaetona and Mario want to hang it on their rustic wall at La Fontelina in time for next season. That is really all the matters to me, as it may mean I have a chance of getting a table.

What a place it is.
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