before the film 

model + stylist: olivia mangue

creative directed and shot by maia feruzi

Friday March 1st 2024 3:30pm

📍AMC Downtown Crossing, Boston, MA

shot on canon eos rebel t3i 18-24mm, 70-300mm

concept

This shoot was completely unplanned and entirely spur of the moment which is probably why it’s one of my favorite shoots I’d done in awhile. Originally Olivia and I had planned to shoot her queer portraits for my series but the world had other plans. The station we wanted to shoot in was closed and the weather was horribly rainy which ruined the outside section as well. We were already outside and downtown so we decided to grab a warm meal and go see a movie. Showing up an hour early to the movie wound up being our smartest move of the day. It’s been ages since I’d been in a movie theater what with COVID and the sinking economy so being completely alone was a creative chance I could not pass up. Since I already had my camera and Olivia was already dressed nicely I asked her if she wanted to take some shoots in the theater. She agreed, a few camera flashes and endless laughter later, we wound up with these magical pure 90s film aesthetic shots.

This spontaneous shoot came at the perfect time for me. Lately I’ve been feeling extremely lost with my work and frustrated with the battle of creating for social media and money vs creating for myself and the pure joy that comes with creating something with another person. I began to doubt myself, my skills, my editing choices, basically everything that I felt made me the photographer I am today. Being able to not think about anything and just do something for fun with no limits on how I could express myself was exactly what my creative soul needed. Giggling in an empty theater with a friend reminded me exactly why I started photography in the first place. I liked it. I loved capturing my friends and family in new ways than they’d ever seen themselves and make them feel good. I loved facing challenges of set design and the elements when shooting outside. I even loved the editing process which can be notoriously tedious but to me was sometimes the best part, seeing a vision come to life. I started photography because I loved it as a medium of self expression and I’d begun to forget that in recent months. It felt really good to tap back into that feeling.