A widowed woman unable to carry on and who only lives in the odd chapters.
A fundamentally optimistic man who lives in the even chapters and is about to find out a shocking truth about his own identity.
These are the premises of Magpies, a 150 pages long graphic novel about loss, love and the quest for the real self.
This is a project that has been going on for years, often neglected for long periods of time, always haunting me in the back of my mind.
I used analogue and digital techiques, in form of photographs, collages, drawings and photomontages; I wanted to break free from restrictions imposed by my work: I didn’t want to spend my time caring about the rules of how a photograph should be made, I don’t like all the fuss around the “digital vs analogue” issue, I don’t care how much post production is put into a single photo. All I wanted was to grab the images I had in mind and spread them onto a piece of paper so that they would stop bugging me.
Using a medium like the graphic novel to tell a story, I was able to explore narrative possibilities which are very different from those granted by a single photograph or even a series of photos.
Combining text and images, I can look at a concept from different points of view simultaneously, creating a bond with the reader, who is to participate more actively in the unfolding of the plot, creating a short circuit between words and pictures.
There are more layers.
The title refers to a traditional nursery rhyme for children that goes:

The narrative is divided into seven chapters, which mimic the rhyme and try to shed light on one question: who are we, really? And how do we change when we relate to other people around us?