They Don't Look Like Me by Niccolò Rastrelli

Niccolò Rastrelli, born in Florence in 1977, is a documentary and portrait photographer who began his journey in photography during his university years after his mother won a camera from a supermarket points collection. He studied photography in Florence and moved to Milan in 2004, focusing his photographic research on people and their identities. Niccolò's work often explores the concept that our identities can be transformed through changes in appearance—a notion as ancient as our consciousness of our bodies. One of the most modern expressions of this idea is the practice of cosplay, popular among digital natives, which combines "costume" and "play" to indicate both the act of dressing up and the costume itself. In his project "They Don’t Look Like Me," Rastrelli delves into this phenomenon, traveling to Italy, Kenya, and Japan to portray cosplayers with their families, often highlighting the humorous contradictions between conventional bourgeois norms and the vivid world of cosplay. Currently, Niccolò is working on personal projects and assignments, continuing to capture the intricate dance between identity and representation.

www.niccolorastrelli.com

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HM: It was lovely to see your work at the Cortona on the Move festival recently in Italy and we found the exhibition delightful. Were you happy with it?

NR: It was really great to see my work on the walls finally. I am so used to seeing it digitally on a screen but it was a different experience to see those prints and how it had been curated with the yellow walls and blue frames which made it more like a pop culture exhibition.

HM: Why has the theme of identity been so important in your work?

NR: Yes I have explored this theme in my work in my previous series as well as this current one. From how people changed their identities and tried to be unique with their covid face masks and the project AfroItalians and their identity that was a project about those Afro Italians that had realised their dreams in Italy so the positive way of that culture in Italy.

I am really close to the identity theme because it is very topical at this time. Many years ago you would decide an identity for your whole life. Now you can change your identity throughout your life which has risen to this word of fluidity that so many people use when we talk about identity today.

I also think it was hard for me to find my identity both as a photographer and in my life generally. When I was younger I kept changing my ideas about myself and what I wanted to be. After a while I discovered photography.

HM: How did you discover photography?

NR: It was actually very ironic! My mother won a camera in a supermarket competition and when I started to take pictures on it I slowly I understood that the world was much nicer through the lens which allowed me to finally find my way and become a photographer. I was also moved by an exhibition that I saw here in Florence by Araki and I was impressed with his work. The combination of that exhibition and the competition camera made it an easy decision to become a photographer. I was about 20 years old at the time.

A couple of years later I attended photography school in Florence.

HM: Araki is a surprising influence that I couldn’t have guessed. Can you tell us more about his influence?

NR: My influences and references have changed over the years. At that time I was very interested in fashion photography. After photography school I moved to Milan and became an assistant photographer in the fashion world. After three years as an assistant, I found it really boring! Another photographer that helped me in Milan said if you want to be a fashion photographer you have to love the dresses, not just the models which was actually very true. You could be shooting a pair of shoes for a full day which if you love those shoes you can do that well but if you don’t, it would be very difficult.

I had always loved taking photographs of people in a reportage way and in 2010 I started my career as it is today, taking photographs editorially of people and I realised that the stories were really important to me and this drew me closer to the documentary style. The approach of the photography school I attended was also very documentary led and we were taught to create personal projects.

HM: Do you work commercially now in order to fund your personal projects?

NR: I work with several advertising agencies in Milan. I do love working in advertising as it's more sociable and I enjoy working with other people. Personal projects you work alone a lot.

15 May 2024
Pitan (33) poses with her three cats, her current family, in her bedroom in Tokyo. Pitan produces costumes for successful young artists from the world of entertainment. In the photo she plays Nenekochan an original cosplay, a doll with the appearance of a cat.

06 May 2024
Dokutoku-na-ugoki (36), poses with her parents and their dog at their home in Tokyo, Japan; Dokutoku-na-ugoki works as a secretary and has been cosplaying for more than ten years. In the photo she plays Kirby a fictional character from the "Kirby" video game series.

12 May 2024
Ren (21) and his father Atsushi (57), pose together with their grandfather at their home in Ibakari, Japan; Ren is still trying to discover what he wants to do in life and has been practising cosplay for 4 years. Atsushi is the director of Ibaliger and has been practicing cosplay for 20 years, Ibaliger are the characters they are playing, invented by Atsushi, good humanoids who through events for children and others try to teach good manners.

10 January 2024
Brenda (24), poses with her mother and brother in their living room in Thika (Kenya); she is a student and has been practicing Cosplay since 2018. In the photo she plays the female version of Chainsaw Man the protagonist in the manga “Chainsaw Man”.

05 May 2024
Pretaporco (45), poses with his parents at their home in Kanagawa, Japan; Pretaporco is a performer and drag queen who has been cosplaying for about 20 years. In the photo he plays Piccolo one of the main characters from the manga "Dragon Ball".

15 January 2024
Denis (24) poses with his mother just out of their house in Mombasa (Kenya); he is an actor and performer and has been practicing cosplay since 2021. In the photo he plays Zenitsu Agatsuma from the manga “Demon Slayer”.

HM: What is your ambition for They Don’t Look Like Me?

NR: I would love to do another chapter for this project in Latin America and in a few weeks I am heading to Delhi where I intend to take photographs of the Cosplayers and their families. My real ambition and dream is to realise this series as a photobook which is a completely different feeling to seeing it on the screen or on the wall. I hope I can make that happen really soon!

I have seen my work a great deal on the screen but it is completely different when you see it enlarged on the wall. In Cortona they were around 1 metre and you found some much detail which was beautiful. I particularly liked “Chainsaw Man” when I saw it framed on the wall. It was so surreal the whole image of him and his parents and even though I met so many characters at the comic events I went to, the Chainsaw man was always my favourite!

HM: What drew you to photographing Cosplay?

NR: I knew nothing about Cosplay or Manga originally. The last time I dressed up I was probably 7 with my mum but I found these cosplayers at comic events in Italy initially. Later I had a fixer in Africa and Japan.

Cosplayers in Africa were so different where the materials that they were using to create their costumes were very raw and the outcomes were really interesting.

For me this work is interesting when you find it somewhere you really wouldn’t expect it. I was really surprised to find it in Africa. It was so unexpected. This movement started in Japan, the mecca of Cosplay so finding it in Europe and Japan was expected but I have discovered they are all over the world and you can find them everywhere. They do things so differently in Japan, the girl I photographed that plays as a cat and lives with three other cats that she believes are her real family.

Many people I photographed in Africa were so happy to see my photographs of them in magazines and have written to thank me for supporting their cosplay community in Kenya.

It is people from all walks of life that are bored in their usual lives from students to professionals. You can find doctors, actors, people that are working and studying in all different ways of life and its really this contrast between the Cosplay world and the normal world that fascinates me. How there is another fantastical world that is living right alongside the world we know.

HM: What makes this series is your decision to use the parents and the contrast between the kids and their children. What made you decide to use the parents?

NR: I was originally inspired by John Olson’s work from the Life Magazine in the 1970’s that took photographs of rock stars like Elton John and Frank Zappa with their parents and I realised when I started this project that this was the way to tell this story too. For me some of the parents during the photo shoots were so confused why they were there!

For me it's less about the masks and more about the identities people are trying to create. I am less interested in whether the masks and costumes are professional but more interested in the contrast with their daily lives, which is told much better when you photograph them with their parents.

There is an age for all of us somewhere between 16 - 25 where you start to feel you want to be free from your parents and that you realise you are different from your parents and want to make your own way. The generational gap that is true for all children and parents is so apparent in these pictures.

HM: Did you secure any sponsorship to help you make this project international?

NR: Yes, after my Kenyan chapter I was sponsored by Autolinee Toscane to make my Japanese chapter and to support the exhibition here in Cortona. It was such a huge help for me as this Japanese work was important to the project. I am very thankful for it and it was really welcome!