A Space of His Own: Francesco Daprile
Apart from being a dear friend of mine and a visionary, Francesco Daprile Genualdo, 22, is a former Bocconi student with a passion for design, photography and music. Charmed by his impeccable aesthetic sensibility and curatorial ability, I followed him on Instagram approximately three years ago, to only find out that he lived 1km away from me and was also a freshman at Bocconi. Today, I'm sharing with you a snapshot of him in time; a transcript of a typical conversation of ours over coffee paired with some of his sketches.
The following conversation took place in Milan, Italy on July 15th 2019
F: How do we start? Cause for me interviews are like going to the dentist; he promises it won’t be painful and then it ends up being horrible.
I: It will be a casual conversation, like the ones we always have. No stress, no pressure.
F: Alright, sounds good. Let’s do it. Where do we begin?
I: From where we met, I guess. And how incredible it is that nowadays you can make friends through Instagram and have your digital and real life overlap. So the story goes; I found your profile and thought it was very cool, I dmed you, we hung out, and have been friends ever since. It did take you a while to follow me back though, which is something I think of as a very Francesco thing.
F: Hahah, I’m quite picky with the people I follow on Instagram, it’s true. I try not to follow many people because we’re already surrounded by so much information, so it’s important for me to not overwhelm myself.
I: I feel the same way, although I always struggle because I can’t decide between following nobody and following 2K people. There is so much talent out there that it is very hard for me to not follow every cool person I see.
F: I agree, but I think if you follow too many people, your feed becomes so over-saturated; you follow your friends, the artists you like, meme accounts and then it’s so easy to fall into the trap of the infinite scroll.
I: Of course, plus, if you follow too many people their content gets lost in your feed, and in a way through your effort of trying to get more content, you end up getting less of it, often missing the things you actually care about. But I really struggle with keeping the # of people I follow limited also because I go on Instagram “sprees”, where I find someone cool and check who they follow and then find more cool people through them. It’s an endless cycle.
F: Yeah I was thinking of creating a new account on which I only follow artists and people that inspire me. But that is also cause of this mania I have of categorising everything, which was also the reason I created my finsta. Well that, and the fact that I wanted my main account to have a very specific aesthetic and sometimes that felt limiting. Plus so many people kept getting offended because I wasn’t following them back, that it made more sense for me to have a profile where I can follow people I know in real life, and keep my main account for more inspirational things, mostly cool pages.
I: I completely understand what you mean. Although I personally sometimes end up finding some pages very impersonal and completely unrelated to my life. Maybe because I feel this need to relate to the content I see in some way. For example, I follow a few magazines, but sometimes I get so tired of seeing their things that I end up unfollowing. And then I follow them again some other time when I’m bored and want some content to scroll though.
F: Thing is with instagram, it really works like a black hole. You say you’ll go to bed at 12am, and next thing you know it’s 3am and you’re still there because you’re constantly finding good content. But the issue is, nothing remains, nothing leaves an impression on you. You just like the images, maybe save them, but with the amount of contents we see, it’s impossible to actually keep all of it.
I: Yeah I agree. For the past few weeks I’ve been in that similar black hole of tumblr as well, because I found a few blogs with incredible posts, and those made me want to find more and more. I feel like it’s just so easy to get addicted to good content.
F: Hahah I follow you on tumblr, so I’ve noticed you being very active. But personally, I’m glad you’re going through that phase cause every time I open tumblr, your fantastic images are there, which means less work for me.
“The process of going through a book is so different, it forces you to pay attention and remember. You have to physically buy the book, pick it up from the library, open it, look at it. Whereas with the content we see online, the memory fades very quickly. On social media we really do not value things enough and correctly.”
I: For sure and a few days ago I went through my archive and saw the things I was reblogging when I first got my account in 2012 and oh boy. It was all Victoria’s Secret models and photographs of NY. My taste has definitely evolved since then, which I’m happy about.
F: Oh yeah, but also times have changed so much and so have trends. But those old things give us lots of meme content to laugh at nowadays.
A phase I’ve been going through lately is an increasing affection for coffee table books; photography, graphics, anything. I just love how books give you limited information at a time and there isn’t this big wave of things you get online, but rather you choose what you want to see. There’s the introduction, and the images printed on nice paper and you can save the ones you like by adding a little paperclip. And then you collect all the things you like from all the different books. It’s a completely different feeling.
I: I agree, 1000%. I think that idea of collecting your favourites is something tumblr really relies on, and the idea of mood boards. You go around and find the images that you like and that inspire you and then you reblog them to create your own little archive. And regardless of me finding my 2012 posts very cringy, it was nice to be able to go back and see how my taste and aesthetic sensibility changed. But as you said, the feeling of digital cannot compete with that of physical.
F: That is very true, but honestly the process of going through a book is so different, it forces you to pay attention and remember. You have to physically buy the book, pick it up from the library, open it, look at it. Whereas with the content we see online, the memory fades very quickly. On social media we really do not value things enough and correctly. I often go through my instagram likes to see the change in my taste, and I realise that there is so many posts I like without even realising. It’s robotic, distant.
I: We definitely live in a weird era. Another thing I think about often is how fluid our aesthetic is, and how it fluctuates so much and so quickly. I sometimes feel that I don’t even know what my aesthetic would be without social media, because I receive so much information from there on a daily basis. I truly wonder how much of my aesthetic is a product of the people I follow and the things I find cool.
F: I have those thoughts as well, and some things I like are completely contradictory and would not fit under the same umbrella of “Francesco’s aesthetics”. But what I’ve come to realise is that our taste is shaped organically, every day of our lives. We exist and we do the things that we like and we absorb things, and then one day wake up and realise like “oh, this is my aesthetic”. When I was young I would sit down on my desk and physically try to develop my aesthetic and try to be something or pick a box to fit into. But I don’t stress too much about those things anymore, I just let my instincts guide me.
I: You’re right. Although there is lots of pressure with nowadays, since our social media and the content we share shapes an image about us, communicates a message for us. And that can be stressful. What does this photo say of me? What does my profile say about me?
F: Oh definitely. But I love confusing people, so they can’t categorise me in any way. Plus it’s nice to show you’re “multifaceted” —although literally everyone is today.
“IN SOME WAYS, IT’S UPSETTING, REALLY. BECAUSE YOU’RE TRYING TO BE GOOD AT EVERYTHING, THE NEW RENNAISANCE MAN, AND YOU DON’T REALISE WHEN TO STOP. IT’S THE BIG RISK OF SPREADING YOURSELF TOO THIN, SAYING YOU’RE GOOD AT EVERYTHING WHEN IN REALITY, YOU’RE AVERAGE IN ALL THE THINGS YOU’RE DOING. IT’S THIS ILLUSION WE ALL HAVE, THAT WE’RE LIMITLESS AND CAN DO EVERYTHING. ”