Paul Gargagliano · Hazel Photo
I photograph weddings with a documentary eye, a calm presence, and a strong bias toward the moments that actually matter when you look back years from now.
San Francisco · Documentary · Worldwide
Yes, I know. Gargagliano is a righteous surname — steeped in the history of the Greek Empire, and yet, it is catastrophic conversationally. "Garr-gal-YAH-no." Four syllables, very little mercy.
So I named the business after the street where I met my wife.
Practicality
Because Gargagliano is a righteous surname, and yet not at all a good business name.
Whimsy
Because I met the love of my life, Adeline, on Hazel Avenue.
You have them in your life too — practicality and whimsy. It's probably why you're here.
Nearly a decade ago I received an inquiry unlike any other: two people who met at Phillips Exeter Academy, a ceremony at Phillips Church, a beloved family home built in 1718 just across the street, a US Senator officiating, and the possibility of a reception in a backyard with fruit trees (grandma's pies) and an old grapevine beside the garden (directly inspired a poem by Robert Frost.)
Then my eye stumbled across the date. I had a conflicting wedding, and for the first time I asked a client a question I had never asked before.
I tell this story because it says something true about how I work. I am first and foremost in it for the stories. I am not the photographer who shows up, presses the shutter five thousand times, and disappears. When I say yes to your wedding, I mean it in the way that counts.
My first photographs were from a wedding. They took the human knee as their subject. Because I was short. Because I was five years-old. I certainly took myself seriously enough.
I didn't give up.
When adolescence got tough, photography became my escape. With a camera in my hand, adults took me seriously and strangers talked to me. I was an active photographer throughout my school years.
In college I had the good fortune to study under Pipo Nguyen-Duy — a visionary photographer who taught me that a photograph has a map, a sequence, a dance built in, and it is the photographers job to understand that dance front and back.
That has stayed with me every single day since.
One auspicious day I brought a camera to a friend's wedding. No plan, no agenda — just a camera and the slightly reckless optimism that has historically served me well.
Afterwards I sent them a couple hundred frames. Off-the-cuff. No intention behind it, just what I saw and loved and wanted to draw near.
They called me.
"Paul. Why didn't you say something. Your photos were better than the photographer we hired."
Something "clicked." I'm sorry. I had to.
And now, here we find ourselves nearly 15 years down the road.
Documentary photography means I am not in the business of manufacturing moments. I won't make your guests love each other more. I won't make your mother cry or laugh on cue.
What I will do is be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, be invisible enough that people forget I'm there, and press the shutter at the precise instant that the thing you will want to remember is happening.
That's the whole job. It sounds simple. It is not simple.
But when it works — and I do make it work — you get a photograph that doesn't look like a wedding photograph. It looks like a piece of your life story forever. The difference is enormous.
Most of the work is quiet. Watching the room. Reading where attention is drifting. Moving before the moment announces itself. Then, occasionally, lunging.
The couples who hire me are not looking for a photographer. They're looking for someone who is going to pay attention — to the grandmother's face during the vows, to the chaos before the ceremony, to the quiet moment at the end of the night when it's just the two of you and the dance floor is empty and it hits you all at once.
I've been paying attention at weddings for fifteen-plus years. I'm not tired of it yet.
San Francisco · Oakland · Napa · Big Sur · Lake Tahoe · Worldwide
