A widow who cannot move on after the death of the person she loved and who lives only in the odd-numbered chapters. A fundamentally optimistic man who lives only in the even-numbered chapters and is about to discover a terrible truth about himself. These are the premises of Magpies, a 150-page graphic novel about loss, love, and the search for one's identity.
It's a project that took years to complete, often put aside for long periods of time, but always gnawing at the back of my mind.
I used analog and digital techniques: photography, collage, drawings, and photomontages. I wanted to go beyond the restrictions imposed by my work, leaving aside the rules about how a photo “should be done.” I have never been interested in the conflict between analog and digital; it doesn't matter how much post-production is needed to transform a photograph into an illustration.
The only thing that interests me is capturing the images I have in my head and putting them on paper so that they stop bothering me.
Using a medium such as the graphic novel to tell a story has allowed me to explore different narrative possibilities, different from those offered by a single photo or a series.
By combining text and images, it is possible to approach a concept from different points of view at the same time, creating a bond with the reader, who can thus participate more actively in the unfolding of the plot, circulating words and images.
The title refers to a traditional English nursery rhyme about magpies, which says that depending on the number of birds you see, the omen changes:
“One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret Never to Be Told”.
The narrative is divided into seven chapters that follow the nursery rhyme and seek to shed light on one question in particular: who are we? And how do we change when we relate to the people around us?
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