BLACKRAPID SPOTLIGHT: Edoardo Agresti

Edoardo Agresti – Edoardo Agresti Photographer [s]

Wedding and documentary photography

Born in Florence, Edoardo inherited his father’s passion for travel and photography. He has over 130 expeditions to as many countries under his belt.

He is a member of important international associations: Wedding PhotoJournalistic Association, Artistic Guild WPJA, World’s Best Wedding Photo. He is the winner of numerous international awards, including the National Geographic, the WPPI, the Spider B & W. Master and collaborator for over 20 years for the Nikon School and Nikon School Travel.

In 2019 he joined the National Geographic Expeditions photography team. His latest book was released in 2021: Photography and the art of Gin Tonic.

Do You Have a Good Photo Tip for Us?

In a world of photographic bulimia where there is no longer a relationship between the eye, mind and heart, he returns to reflect before taking a photo. Make your images make sense. Taking photographs doesn’t just mean pressing the button, it makes it become a thoughtful action again.

When a Prince is to Get Married

I was having dinner in a small trattoria in the hills of Tuscany one summer evening when I received a phone call. The caller was strange. Many numbers preceded by a +234. It was definitely a phone call from abroad but I didn’t associate those first three digits with any known country or at least with which I had already had the opportunity to speak. I replied curiously. It was a wedding planner and she asked me for a quote for a wedding. I started asking her the usual questions like: when, where, how many guests and I was amazed when she told me that she was calling me from Nigeria for a wedding with around 2,000 guests. Well, the first thing I told her was to write me an email and that I would respond to her on that. I hung up convinced that it was a fake or, worse, still the start of a scam.

Within 10 minutes I received an email with all the information I needed to give her a quote and she requested it with a certain urgency. With very little desire I replied in a generic way, without going into details and without even exposing myself with figures. I remained very vague, I wanted to understand where the deception was. I remember that I also asked on social media to see if others had received a similar phone call. Only two of us had been contacted. This also left me somewhat perplexed. I decided to send her my price list and see how things developed, convinced, however, that I was wasting time.

Our correspondence instead continued, going into more and more details and with increasingly interesting specifications. Fifteen days after our first conversation I received confirmation. I was still far from the idea of having taken the marriage, in fact I was always convinced that, in the end there, was the trick and I was racking my brain to understand where it was. The wedding planner asked me for my bank details to transfer the deposit. I told them to her. There were still 3 months to go until the wedding day and honestly, if she had credited me with the deposit I had requested, I didn’t understand where the catch could be. The bank transfer arrived, things were getting really interesting. Shortly thereafter I organized a ‘Zoom’ call with the future bride who wanted to get to know me first, even if only on video. Now I was realizing that I had actually been given the job and that I was going to Nigeria.

The news on the terrorist actions of Boko Haram in the north of the country were certainly not reassuring. Well, a few days before the visas arrived in my passport, the wedding planner gave me guarantees that terrorism was located in the north east while the wedding was in the south west and that in any case I would have bodyguards who would follow our movements. I must say that this last consideration did not reassure me much.

I and some of my staff left from Italy. I still didn’t understand who the bride was or even that it was a royal wedding. I had guessed that they were wealthy, but my imagination stopped there. It was after our arrival first in Lagos and then in Benin City that we began to realize that it was not a simple wedding of a rich Nigerian couple. I remember that we entered the bride’s house passing by about twenty bodyguards, police vans, several soldiers, many of whom were wearing bulletproof vests and carrying a machine gun over their shoulders. Well it had to be something more. We met the bride, her brothers, her family. While talking about her, Ivie, the future bride, told us with an embarrassing naturalness that her future husband was a prince. We looked at each other to make sure we understood correctly. Yes, we understood correctly: my husband to be is a prince!

We started shooting with new eyes and attention. Now it was no longer a ‘normal’ service but was becoming something different. A reportage that went beyond wedding photography. The services of Benedicte Kurzen, Robin Hammond, Glenda Gordon who had worked in Nigeria came to mind. However, unlike them, I had been chosen as the couple’s personal photographer and this made me quite proud. So I began to tell what I was experiencing right from the setups, from the preparation of the ‘favors’, from the pre wedding rituals, in short, I wanted to document a story that I had never lived, a very particular experience, totally different from what I had ever photographed before. Traditions, cultures, unusual and new human relationships that I would never have thought of or hoped to experience. I wanted to make a reportage that would show all this.

We spent more than a week in Nigeria and the anecdotes I could tell are truly numerous. We found ourselves in situations that were sometimes embarrassing and sometimes photographically intriguing. We had a unique experience, at least for me. I won’t go any further and I won’t go into details, I’ll leave the word to the photos.