Sirenetta

Siren: award winning picture of Rosita 1993

Sirens and mermaids in English are two different creatures but one in the same in Italian. Both belong to the menagerie of mythological females who lure men to their doom. In the case of the siren it is her voice that holds the fatal power, with the mermaid her sensuality.

Etruscan Mermaid

That said the pagan mermaids like those depicted by the Etruscans appear to have no negative connotations implying a more balanced sexuality than in this opinion by the aptly named Jesuit Cornelius Lapide, who said of Woman, “her glance is that of the fabled basilisk, her voice a siren’s voice—with her voice she enchants, with her beauty she deprives of reason—voice and sight alike deal destruction and death.”

One gets used to seeing the final print in a frame or in this case on a book cover, but it never fails to send a slight shiver through me to look at the original negative or transparency after many years have gone by – in this case exactly 20 years. Even handling film these days makes me feel, momentarily at least, nostalgic for a bygone age. In this case it was Ilford FP4 developed by myself. I took just one roll of 10 shots, I did not seem to shoot much film in those days, probably because I hated developing; all that mucking about threading spirals and mixing chemicals.

The print was toned blue, then I bleached it between the legs to enhance the fish tail effect. It was destined to be on the cover of a recipe book called “Se il pesce avesse le cosce“. The cover picture had to be slightly saucy in line with the title which roughly translates as “If Only Fish had Thighs” – the recipes had a slightly erotic flavour. Finally I copied out one of the recipes from the book diagonally with a soft pencil.

I entered it into the competition held annually by the prestigious Association of Photographers in London which I had just joined. It was the only time in twenty-five years of participating that I was accepted – beginners luck.

It was subsequently litho-printed in a limited edition but sadly the original print is lost.

The limited edition Belle book is on sale here

Medusa and Metamorphosis: the shoot

I met Valeria at the Incanto restaurant in Amsterdam where she works as a waitress and sommelier. When she came to our table my friend and agent Dick Kits said, “Don’t you think she could be one of your Belle?” I showed her my website on my phone and she was enthusiastic right from the start.

That was during the non-summer of 2012. Valeria isn’t Dutch, but southern Italian from Puglia. Like so many well educated Italians she has had to emigrate to find work. Once emigrants were poor, now like her they are mainly graduates.

It took me a while to come up with an idea, but I had a hunch that she would make a beautiful addition to the Metamorphosis series. We finally organised the shoot  for a freezing snowy day in mid-March 2013. The studio was Dick’s office, not very big and not very high, but with a wide angle lens big enough. The set couldn’t have been simpler.

I brought my make-up artist Simonetta Baletti with me from Italy. Make-up is the Cinderella of the creative team. In fact one make-up artist became so fed up with various photographers taking all the credit for his extraordinary creations that he bought a Hasselblad and started taking pictures himself: Serge Lutens is my favourite living photographer.

Possibly as a result of visiting Holland regularly I am going through an aquatic phase. I set out to take just one image, Medusa, and yet when I got back to Italy a friend of mine was looking through the shots and she thought the ‘question mark’ looking images seemed interesting, so largely as a result of her intervention I started working on the second picture which reminded me of a seahorse. This image was to become Metamorphosis .

I wonder if I have other neglected images lurking somewhere in the depths of Lightroom waiting to be given the treatment?

the ‘question mark’ in Lightroom

The idea of Valeria metamorphosing into a sea creature came to me as I was manipulating the image in Photoshop and  I realised that for both artist and model the act of creation is a form of metamorphosis. Rather like Gregor in Kafka’s story, neither of us that morning realised quite how  she was going to be transformed.

See the Metamorphoses here

after the shoot: good wine and dancing to Bowie

Metamorphosis

When Valeria Saporetti awoke the morning of 12 March 2013  from troubled dreams she found herself transformed…….”What has happened to me?” she thought. It was no dream.*

Most maritime nations from the Picts to the Chinese have mythologised the  tiny sea creature, the seahorse. The Greeks named it the hippocampo, part horse part coiled monster. In 1587 the Venetian anatomist Aranzi likened that part of the brain concerned with memory and spatial navigation to the seahorse, the hippocampus.

Whereas women use the cerebral cortex for spatial skills, men use the left hippocampus for navigation which may explain why there are more male taxi drivers. The fact that men and women’s brains are different is most likely a good thing for humanity as in this way we complement each other, the sum is greater than the parts.

Mermaid & Seahorse by F.Church

Like the threatened panda on land, the seahorse has become a symbol of environmental protection of the oceans, and like the panda it is a pretty bizarre animal.
Almost uniquely amongst fish it swims upright and poorly at that. It is the only fish with a neck. The male incubates and hatches the eggs and not only succours the young, but also provides them with a substance similar to mammalian milk. Like the panda it is ‘simpatico’, its endearing qualities making it an ideal ambassador for the protection of the oceans.

capture time

Valeria had no idea what was going to happen to her that day and, he has to admit, neither neither did the photographer! – that is the wonder of the creative process. Valeria was transformed into a sea creature on 12th March but she was really there for that 1/30th of a second. That is the difference between photography and painting, more real than painting, that flash of a moment is preserved forever, an eternal present.

*with apologies to Kafka

Medusa

” Nature, red in tooth and claw”, these lines by Tennyson describe man’s primeval fear of nature. The jellyfish has neither tooth nor claw, it is not even a fish, but it is a pretty terrifying beast all the same: all are painful stingers, many are deadly.  Alluding to the creatures’ agonising tentacles as well as it’s chilling beauty, the Swedish poet and botanist Linneus in 1752 coined the name Medusa.

Medusa had chthonic parents but was not herself immortal, thus she was slain by Perseus who thereafter used her severed head as an offensive shield to petrify his enemies. Chthonic means from the deep, from the earth. These were the older gods who came to be displaced by the Olympians, they are the nature gods and their essence is androgynous or feminine. They represent the awfulness of nature, the fear, but also the wonder; this is the cult of Dionysius. The Olympian masculine and warlike gods replaced the chthonic gods. This is the cult of Apollo who represents masculine dominance over nature, both nature without and nature within, and significantly is the god of art and music. How many female artists and composers can you think of?

Medusa, deadly, beautiful, but not necessarily vicious comes and goes in the history of art, her frightfulness seems to wax and wane according to men’s views on women. She was for example especially terrifying in the late nineteenth century, a time of rapid social change when women were asserting themselves and when a syphilis epidemic meant promiscuous sex was deadly.

Medusa by Evelyn De Morgan, 1876.

And yet it is from this period that I have chosen Evelyn De Morgan’s sculpture of Medusa. There are precious few famous women painters and fewer still sculptors. Her Medusa is neither decapitated as she is in most art nor frightening. She looks like Ovid describes her, as a victim; raped by Poseidon, the goddess Athena and fellow Olympian then transformed the unfortunate woman’s beautiful hair to serpents and made the mere sight of her awful face so terrifying as to petrify mortal men.

Ultimately Medusa was a blameless victim with deadly power, like the snake itself which never bites unless provoked, and the medusa jellyfish which stings only if you invade its space. Nature is as cruel as it is blameless. Women and the feminine side of men have suffered as a result. Perhaps the result of all this suffering is art.

A woman’s countenance, with serpent-locks

Gazing in death on Heaven.

Shelley

Rare Ribs

The spare rib. Bass relief on Orvieto cathedral

There is an exhibition at the British Museum,  Ice Age Art,  Arrival of the Modern Mind. The exhibits, mostly sculpture from the very dawn of art 40,000 years ago fall mainly into two groups:  realistic animals, and female figures. The former would appear to have been closely observed and carved by the hunters themselves; the latter, the females, are much more abstract, the hips disproportionally wide, the breasts overly pendulous.

Mature woman. World’s oldest ceramic figure.

What intrigues me is, who created these abstracted female figures, men or women? They are not erotic like so much of subsequent art of the nude, the message seems more talismanic. The exhibition has placed works by Picasso, Matisse,  Moore, Mondrian (all men) alongside these ancient pieces, but this seems a red herring. The moderns were influenced stylistically by the stone age work they saw, but the message surely is completely different, as is possibly the sex of the authors – were some of the first artists women sitting in their caves and shelters waiting for their menfolk to return?
I ask this because female artists are not well represented in the arts of the last thousand years or so. I looked at the index of artists that have inspired me for the Belle, there is only one woman…… so far, Tamara Lempicka.
I did a straw poll yesterday in a café with the two men and two women sitting at the table next to me, complete strangers. With hardly any introduction, I said ‘please write down the names of as many painters as possible, you have a minute.’ They all had plenty of painters, but not one nominated a single woman. I gave them a further minute to come up with some female painters – a complete blank with all four.

I asked them to name writers; women did better, but were still in a minority. Composers as a category was a complete disaster for women.

Why is this? Could it be neurological? Hormonal? Has education been to blame? Men famously have their muses, do women? Well, Lempicka did,  but the muse was a woman and Lempicka was bi-sexual. I have my own ideas on why women are less creative almost across the board, but I would be interested in hearing other views before I commit myself.

There seems to be precious little space in the modern mind for female art.

Ecstasy

Sometimes when I do a picture it is simply because I admire a work of art so much I just have to take it on myself as a sort of homage to the original; but I do  wonder if people will say, ‘so what?’ Perhaps this is one of them. It has neither any particular note of irony nor does it re-interpret the original. In fact if the Bernini sculpture is a work of genius in its ambiguity, my version is, well…… fairly straightforward, almost a reductio ad absurdum.

It did not take long to shoot and involved a very simple two light set up: soft key light and a flash head on the floor with a red gel. I used the modelling light only, no flash for low depth of field, 85mm f 1.8 lens wide open. As you can see the set was the model’s living room.

I am passionate about Bernini’s genius (this is my second homage, the first was Daphne), so here follows some background about one of his greatest works. The sculpure shown here is only part of a complex whole that includes the  commisioner, Cardinal Cornaro and his family  looking on like Statler and Waldorf from a theatrical box. It is to be found in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, not 10 minutes walk from the railway station, so I recommend a brief walk to admire one of the most remarkable sculptures of any age – absolutely free. If you know very religious person or better still a catholic priest, bring them along, it would be interesting to observe their reaction.

Saint Teresa detail

Bernini managed to ingratiate himself into the courts of a succession of popes and despite the odd mishap such as one of his buildings collapsing, the sodomising of a 16 year old boy and the disfiguring of his mistress Costanza with a razor, his genius was such that he never permanently lost favour.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, “Ecstasy of Saint Teresa”

He was vicious with his nearest, vengeful to his dearest, spiteful and slanderous towards his rivals. But he had his good side, he was a vegetarian living mainly on fruit and he was the greatest sculptor of the Baroque age.

His genius was to make marble lighter than air and flesh appear soft to the touch. The open mouth, the half open eyes are unique to Bernini.

Santa Teresa described her rapture thus:

“……In his hands I saw a large golden spear and at its iron tip there seemed to be a point of fire. I felt as if he plunged this into my heart several times so that it penetrated all the way to my entrails. When he drew it out he seemed to draw them out with it and left me totally inflamed with a great love for God. The pain was so severe that it made me moan several times. The sweetness of this intense pain is so extreme that there is no wanting it to end and the soul is satisfied with nothing less than God. The pain is not physical but spiritual even though the body has a share in it – in fact a large share in it.“

No doubt the ambiguity in Santa Teresa’s account appealed to Bernini as much as the ambiguity of his statue appeals to us. Controversial since it was unveiled it nevertheless is an expression of ecstasy what ever the cause, divine or profane. As the Chevalier de Brosses, laconically remarked while passing through Rome, “Well, if that’s divine love, I know all about it.”

Art and Run

Patrick Nicholas has decided to show off. He organises events in cafés, spas, clubs; they are not strictly exhibitions as nothing is hung on the wall. Rather he displays his work on an easel, explaining how the Belle series has developed over the years.

He recounts anecdotes about the individual works. He invites some of his collaborators to appear with him: the make up artist Simonetta Baletti, and sculptor Giorgio Bevignani with whom he has often worked, and one or two of his models.

Pauline alongside her picture

Here he is (left) with Pauline who appeared in Dragon 2011. The role of the model in art is often underestimated and though she is sometimes given credit as a muse this tends to sound passive, almost ethereal.

At  Art and Run Patrick introduces his models as active participants in the development of the image. He does not work with professionals on the Belle. He chooses the models, or very often they choose him, women from all walks of life, and they are from the very first involved in the creative process. The advantage of using old masters as inspiration is that both artist and model can choose paintings and sculpture as a jumping off point to explain, to illustrate, and to bounce around ideas.

In a creative venture like the Belle, the model is more important than in a conventional fashion shoot. She is the protagonist in a unique image; she is centre-stage, she is involved from the outset in the creation of the picture; without her the image would probably have been very different…… or may not have been born at all. To see the model on the stage, talking about her picture, ready to answer questions from the audience, willing to explain her role in the creation of her image, is fundamental to an Art and Run event.

In this particular event in Bologna, the city where Patrick created the first image in the Belle series back in 1988, he invited Rosita

Rosita with her picture

onto the stage to talk not only about her role in the most recent picture from December 2012 Flying Down to Rio, but also to recount how they had worked together over twenty years ago, before marriage, before children, and why she decided to pose again after such a long gap.

 Art and Run lasts about an hour. After which the public may come forward to look more closely at the prints, browse through the Belle book, and ask further questions of  the artist, his collaborators and the models. The audience loves meeting the models.

The pictures on show are for sale as are the Belle books.

Last but not least, a member of the audience may enquire about participating in a picture with herself as the protagonist; it is one of the attractions of Art and Run that the audience is given the opportunity to appear in the next show.

Siren: Association of Photographers award winning picture of Rosita, 1994