When Vancouver hosted the winter Olympics in 2010, I was offered an opportunity to meet Raphael and Lisa-Marie Mazzucco at the Lancôme Canada launch of their special edition make-up boxes. Fame'd Magazine which I was editor of at the time focused on promoting local. As both were originally from Vancouver, I felt a Behind the Scenes story on their journey to becoming internationally recognized artists would be an inspiring addition to the magazine.
I was able to briefly meet them at the launch, offer a copy of the magazine and ask if they would be interested. While the answer was yes, trying to organize a time in their busy schedule was almost impossible - but in the end a 45 minute slot was found. We sat outside the Opus Hotel where they were staying at a table in front of Caffe Artigiano sipping coffee and laughing constantly. Each added asides to the other's story. They were warm, funny, wildly interesting and oh so much fun to interview. Published in March 2010 - this article is just a very small excerpt of what they shared. Perhaps it's time for a new one!
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Sitting at a table on
Davie Street with Raphael and Lisa-Marie Mazzucco, it quickly becomes
clear they are each others number one fan. Raphael is a top fashion
photographer with extensive credits including 12 Guess campaigns.
Lisa-Marie is a make-up artist who has stepped behind the camera to
become the “go-to” photographer for classical musicians. Recently
they worked together to create Lancôme's Gold Fascination campaign – a tribute to Canada's elite female
athletes. Inspired by Raphael's mixed media artwork, it is a
stunning collaboration.
Both artists have their
roots in Vancouver. Raphael was born and raised in Coquitlam. At 16
he left for Europe to play amateur soccer and returned to play
professionally for the Whitecaps until the league folded. With time
on his hands, he picked up a camera. “I loved it. I would just
walk around Vancouver and shoot anything. Nettwerk Records started
using me to photograph bands and I began to work with model agencies.
It was a very quick transition.” Lisa-Marie moved to Vancouver at
the age of four. She studied piano, ballet and was a competitive ice
skater. Make-up fascinated her from an early age and she was always
experimenting. A few stints as a model in Japan followed school
and then she was back in Vancouver. The pair met just as Raphael
started photography and it was instant chemistry. When Raphael
decided to move to Italy, Lisa-Marie was ready to go.
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| Both at work behind the camera, |
In Milan they lived in a
700 square foot apartment where they produced six shoots a day.
Lisa-Marie would do the styling, hair, make-up and then head to the
kitchen table to do the post-production work. Raphael would push the
furniture aside and use the bedroom to shoot in, then head into the
kitchen to cook dinner. “Living in that small space really helped
my photography,” Raphael recalls. “We would notice that mistakes
could be the most beautiful part of a photograph.” One day the
phone rang - a top Italian photographer had called them by mistake.
He ended up talking with Raphael for over an hour and introduced him
all over Italy. After a few years, the couple decided to head to
Amsterdam where they celebrated the birth of their son. While in
Amsterdam they both acquired agents and began to work with other
artists. Dutch Magazine was a strong supporter of Raphael, providing
him pages and pages of editorial work for his portfolio. The couple
followed this with a brief stay in Montreal where the worked with
clients such as Elle Canada.
Then it was time for their
leap of faith – a move to New York which had always been the final
goal. “There are moments in your life where if that moment didn't
happen, the rest of your life would have taken a totally different
direction,” Lisa-Marie remembers. “We were looking for an
apartment and I was supposed to take a check to the landlord and I
missed him, so we didn't get it. Raphael was upset, I was crying,
and then I remembered one apartment we hadn't looked at yet. There
was no electricity, no bathroom, no kitchen and it was after dark so
we couldn't see. We just walked around feeling the walls and said
we'd take it. The man living in the apartment above us was an agent
who just lost his photographer of ten years. He signed Raphael and
is still his agent today. If I had not lost that apartment, we would
not have met him.”
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| Family portrait |
For Raphael, this launched
his career into the upper echelons. He now travels for months at a
time. Although often on set with up to 40 people, he manages to find
his own space “I'm very spontaneous. I'll grab the model and take
off. I like a girl very natural with almost no makeup and hair that
looks like it's been on the beach all day. If I had three words for
my work it would be raw, organic and romantic.” For Lisa-Marie, it
was time to take a sabbatical and be with her son. Six years later
she was ready to head back to work and chose to step behind the
camera. This developed into a niche working exclusively with
classical musicians. “Photographing classical musicians is all
mine. I do the hair, I do the make-up, I do the retouching - it's my
whole project from beginning to end.” Her style is romantic,
classical and soft. There were a few mishaps in the beginning such
as one of her early shoots with violinist Soovin Kim, “I wanted to
shoot him up on this four foot rock, so I told him to give me his
violin. I was holding my camera so I stuck it between my knees as I
didn't have an assistant. He went pure white - the earth stood
still. The violin was worth two million dollars.”
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| With Lady Liliana Cavendish and Edmundo Huerta BFA at Culo by Mazzucco book launch |
When Lancôme
approached the couple, they were delighted. For five years Raphael
has been creating mixed media artwork by building layers of
photographs, painting and resin into stunning canvases. He decided to
use the same concept in creating imagery for the Gold Fascination
campaign. After the initial photographs were taken, they applied
make-up onto the photographs with brushes, dabbing or mashing with
their fingers and sprinkling. Then he would re-shoot the photograph
to create new images in an organic process that is trademark Raphael.
The finished work was used to create limited edition make-up boxes -
unique pieces of art.
After 20 years in the
industry, the Mazzuccos are still going strong. When asked advice
for others in the industry Raphael offers, “If you want to be a
photographer, you need to understand that all the photographs you
take are your map, your quest. Just be true to yourself and act on
what you feel. Grab everything great and be inspired by many
different people.” Good advice.
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