Ella Rose Muse: the story: La Source, River Adur

Saturday, 15 June 2013

La Source, River Adur

After an exciting full-day shoot in a studio with a Norwegian photographer and four other dance models, all posing en pointe and together in various tangles, I met up with Jeremy Howitt for our three-thousandth shoot, a quick themed piece by the River Adur in Sussex.

Jeremy had attempted a version of Ingres' painting, 'La Source', once before, but wasn't completely happy with his results (I personally quite liked his earlier version, but it just wasn't exactly as he'd intended), so he wanted to have another go at it using me as the model.

Here's what I'm talking about - 'La Source', by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres:

As seems to have been a recurring theme in some of my recent shoots (though I don't take credit for it) the weather was drizzly and required wellies, so I took my pink polka dot ones, bought in the Scottish Highlands (a lot less cool than the red hunter wellies I was gifted by a photographer once after a shoot, but nevertheless, pretty cheerful), out for another airing, having slung them readily in the back of my car.

It might look easy and serene, but holding a fairly heavy jug of water over one's shoulder and controlling the angle best suited to photographic purposes while not soaking oneself and turning one's hair into wet, lank waterweeds, while standing in damp, sinking ground is not the simplest of tasks. Blood (from a mysteriously cut finger) and a lot of mud went into this image, too. I thought you should know that.

Seriously, though, I absolutely love this first image, which is shown here in wonderful sepia, a process I think should be flaunted much more, as well as in a 'vintage' colour toning. Feeling like we'd possibly nailed it just a bit too quickly, I insisted that we do a few variations of poses with the jug afterwards (though they aren't quite as strong, probably), and then, on the way back to the car, Jeremy suggested we do a quick 5-min set on the little wooden bridge we'd walked over on the way there. I love the effect of the lens.

All hail the English countryside!

You can read Jeremy's forum post on purpleport about this shoot here: http://purpleport.com/group/share-a-shoot/16936/la-source/. Hopefully we'll be working together again soon - it's always a pleasure and I love the fact that we always do such completely different styles and distinct themes each time.

In other news, I'm reading an absolutely amazing, though-provoking and mind-opening book at the moment, that left me wandering around London yesterday in a total dream-state of awe at all the things and people around me. No, I'm not on drugs. Will maybe talk about it in my next post...

Walter De La Mare, 'The Listeners'

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Natasha Khan/Bat for Lashes, 'Horse and I'

Got woken in the night,
by a mystic golden light.
My head soaked in river water.
I had been dressed in a coat of armor. They called
a horse out of the woodland.
"Take her there, through the desert shores."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear.
You're the chosen one, there's no turning back now."

The smell of redwood giants.
The banquet for the shadows.
Horse and I, we're dancers in the dark.
Came upon the headdress.
It was gilded, dark and golden.
The children sang.
I was so afraid I took it to my head and prayed.
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."

Mark Doty, 'A Display of Mackerel'

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales’

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

—nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

of heaven’s template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler’s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer—would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They’d prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even now

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don’t care they’re dead

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn’t care that they were living:

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

which is the price of gleaming.

Kate Clanchy, 'Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell'

This is simply to inform you:

that the thickest line in the kink of my hand
smells like the feel of an old school desk,
the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;

that beneath the spray of my expensive scent
my armpits sound a bass note strong
as the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;

that the wet flush of my fear is sharp
as the taste of an iron pipe, midwinter,
on a child's hot tongue; and that sometimes,

in a breeze, the delicate hairs on the nape
of my neck, just where you might bend
your head, might hesitate and brush your lips,

hold a scent frail and precise as a fleet
of tiny origami ships, just setting out to sea.

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Saturday, 15 June 2013

La Source, River Adur