Wings and Light

So we think these captures of Italian model-artist Emanuele Zappariello by Polish artist Agnieszka Lorek could have been lifted from some cobweb-covered Renaissance-era masterpiece hidden away in an Italian castle somewhere. Don’t you? Who knows what treasures are buried out there, just waiting to see the light of day?

In fact, they’re the result of an enchanted weekend when these two met up for the first time at Lorek’s “hermitage in the mountains” in Poland. For Zappariello, the visit was like entering fairyland. He described part of her house as full of “wings, capes of all colors, gorgeous jewelry, mirrors, flowers—it was really the secret room of the fairy queen.”

On the first day, she did his makeup and they went into the forest, where he posed among the logs, moss-covered stones, and fallen leaves. “I felt like Oberon, the king of the fairy people,” he says. “I was inexplicably happy. I was laughing all the time, and with every word we were smiling. It felt like we had known each other for a very long time.” On the next day, the feeling was different, more “divine.” Lorek took him to a place full of large stones and magnetic energy. He was dressed, he says, part alien, part rock-and-roll; part Apollo and part Mercury. There was wind whipping around him and “Agnieszka gave me the strength to pose in a very new way for me, full of masculine energy and power.” The strength he felt that day because of her changed his life, he says.

As for Lorek? “It’s like a figure from a mystical, ancient world,” she says, “to whom the wind gave wings and light. There was a moment during the photo session when we were both terrified by the force of the sudden wind, which lifted literally everything Emanuele was wearing and created wings. It was so beautiful that I stopped taking pictures for that moment and watched as if enchanted. I felt like I saw a real angel being lifted by the power of nature itself.”

Two years have passed and Zappariello often speaks of Lorek to his parents and his friends. “I found not only the queen of the fairies but also a friend and a talented artist. I feel so much gratitude. I wish that every artist could have someone like Agnieszka in their life.”

Photography: Agnieszka Lorek @agnieszka_lorek
Model: Emanuele Zappariello @emanuelezappariello
Costume: Barbara Gunia @les_ateliers_barbara_gunia
Arm Jewelry: Venus Forge @anajolartist