Stick ‘em up: a fashion editorial for Solstice Magazine

I have long admired with Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo: a cult film about a gunslinger who feels like an Old-Testament Moses figure both doling out and undergoing the wrath of God. Needless to say, this isn’t your average Western. So when the opportunity arose to assemble my own team of “spiritual warriors” (a reference used by Jodorowsky to designate his team for the film Dune that was never made because the mission went so exorbitantly out of budget), I felt inspired to shoot a fashion editorial with a slight nod to Jodorowsky’s gunslinging psychodrama—minus the exploding toads and lizards.

The wonderful Theresa from Reload models was perfectly cast as our cowgirl heroine, with both strong and angelic demeanor, capable of channeling darkness and light. I wanted to convey these elements in the lighting as well, so as to try to go beyond a mere depiction of a pretty girl in cute Western outfits, to infuse an element of cosmic drama. Hence I added some motion blur and play with shadows, as well as one look painted with light in the background, to convey the trope of Lucky Luke, my favorite comic book cowboy hero from my childhood—the man who could shoot faster than his own shadow.

That our protagonist wasn't a man, but a fierce amazon girl, really delighted me, and while I don’t think I managed to convince anyone in my team to indulge in Jodorowsky’s esoteric epic, I still see my own sense of story and narration reflected in these fashion images, and I am thankful I got to experience my own photographic journey surrounded by my talented stylist, makeup artist, and model on a nice afternoon in my favorite Vienna-based studio: marrying darkness and light.