Mattia Masi, a Milan-based photographer and retoucher who shoots under the handle @topazbox, has built a career on high-fashion campaigns that lean into raw authenticity rather than the fully polished gloss the category usually asks for — work that's landed him campaigns for Miss Dior's handbag line with model Federica Labanca, the handbag brand Coccinelle, and Cultnaked, along with a Grammy Awards reportage project that went viral.
His process is deliberately hands-on: careful lighting built around softboxes and grids, composition where every element earns its place in frame, and retouching restrained enough to enhance a shot rather than rebuild it. He shoots film when he can, for reasons that are more about intention than nostalgia: “Film connects you to the moment,” he says. “It's raw, imperfect and utterly human.”
Masi describes his own role less as photographer than as a curator of emotion, adaptable enough to shift with whoever he's working with: “Style isn't static,” he says, “it evolves with every culture, every collaborator.” He treats pressure as fuel rather than friction when the work is right, and has little interest in flawless images for their own sake: “Perfection is forgettable,” he says. “But a flaw? That's where the story begins.”
