I was recently fortunate enough to be able to present one of my images, “Like Ghosts from an Enchanter Fleeing”, to a small group of art experts.
Understandably I was rather apprehensive, and rather excited at the same time. I love to talk about my work and the opportunity to get advice and feedback is always something I look forward to, whether it’s from experts or not.
Generally I don’t like to give too much away about the stories behind my images because I feel like it deprives the viewer of the story they create about the picture. I like to use themes and motifs from folklore and fairy tales but leave the images open enough so that they can be interpreted in many different ways.
I’ve been in creative writing classes where one person writes the first line of a story, then passes it on for the next person to continue the story. I think about my images in that way too. I start the story and it is for the viewer to fill in the details. Telling them the story feels like telling them what to say.
On this occasion, against my better judgment, I chose to share some details about the inspiration for the image. I’d been looking to do some bleaker, more wintery shots and had been inspired by a story about a Northumbrian Saxon queen whose seers foretold that her only son would drown while still a child, and her attempts to protect him from that fate. The story as told by Peter Walker in his “Folk Tales from the North York Moors” is below:
The legend tells how, for many years, king Oswald/Osmund and his queen had longed for an heir to the kingdom, but to no avail. Eventually after much prayer and consulting the best wisefolk in the country, the queen at last gave birth to a son they called Oswy. The king was overjoyed, but his seers soon warned him that they had looked into the boys future and foretold that Oswy would drown on his 2nd birthday. The king and queen made plans to prevent this fate, and so when the birthday neared, the queen took her child to the highest hill in the region, so as to be far away from any rivers, lakes and streams. They sheltered in a hermits cave on the summit of Odinsberg and when Oswy’s birthday arrived all appeared to be well, but the fates would not be cheated, and so it happened that in the heat of the day, as her child played, the queen fell asleep and the boy wandered off around the hill top. When the queen awoke she was distraught to find her son missing, she frantically searched for the boy but it was too late, the prophecy had been fulfilled and she found the body of her child drowned in the waters of the Odinsberg spring.
The queen died from her grief soon after and so the king buried his queen and son together at a place that was then known as Oswy-by his-mother-lay, and today as Osmotherley.
Odinsberg is an ancient name for Roseberry Topping, a local hill just outside the village in which I grew up, and Osmotherley is one of my favourite shooting spots (I’ve shot a large number of my photographs there) so the story instantly resonated with me.
I started to create a storyline about a grieving queen, wandering the bleak countryside, halfway between life and death, torn between calling to the fates to return her dead child and leaving this life to join him. I transplanted the story from Summer to Winter to allow the scenery to reflect the character’s emotions. My photographs, “Like Ghosts from an Enchanter Fleeing” and “Raven’s Song” both feature this character, in different ways.
So, back to my meeting with the experts.
The image I was presenting was “Like Ghosts from an Enchanter Fleeing.” The title is taken from a Shelley poem, “Ode to the West Wind.” The poem is about the poet’s desire to spread his message far and wide, much as the wind scatters the leaves, but I chose to focus on the first stanza’s description of the wind as driving the last sign of life from the trees, just as the queen is also transitioning from life to death.
I had very little time to introduce the piece so I simply said that it was part of a series of self portrait images inspired by folk tales from the North Yorkshire Moors and that the particular story inspiring this image was one of grief and loss.
I was asked if this reflected my own personal grief and loss and replied that my self portraits are not direct representations of myself, but rather stories and characters…. so, no.
At this point, the experts gave their feedback on my work. They had no emotional connection to the image. It was too commercial, too fashion-inspired, too slick, too shallow perhaps. It was over the top and overly dramatic. They didn’t ask any questions about the story.
I won’t say it didn’t hurt but I took it all in my stride. Not everyone enjoys the aesthetic of my work, nor do I aspire to that. I’m fully aware that my work is over the top and I embrace that rather than attempting to tone it down.
Then something happened that stunned me beyond words. Something I hadn’t been prepared for. A comment I hadn’t predicted or considered. Something that made me feel as if I were outside my own body, watching the whole experience from the corner of the room. One of the panel said…
“I really don’t think the image expresses grief and loss at all. In any case, and this may be a backhanded compliment, the image couldn’t possibly express grief and loss because the model is too pretty”
…….ummmmmm, yeah.
I was speechless for a moment. As my mouth hung open in astonished disbelief, and my brain struggled to hold back the words “that’s not a compliment at all,” one of the others stepped in and took the discussion elsewhere. I bit my lip, pushed through the rest of the meeting (I have no idea what I said) and didn’t take a breath until I got back into my car.
To be honest I’m still processing it. I worked in a notoriously sexist and chauvinistic profession for seven years and, although it was a close call, that was the most offensive thing that has ever been said to me in a professional context.
And I completely disagree. The face of the model is not visible in the image. Technically, she could be hideous under all that hair, and would that really have made it a better piece of art? Who knows?
Of course I’m being flippant. Maybe the sentiment was poorly expressed and was the result of assumptions about the nature of beauty, with the commentator suggesting that visually beautiful images are not best suited for expressing sentiments of grief and loss.
I wouldn’t agree with that viewpoint, but I could perhaps accept it. If my picture fails to move you, if my picture fails to provoke any kind of response, I do consider that it has missed the mark.
If you tell me that it has missed the mark because I am too pretty, I am unlikely to give much weight to your argument.
Sadly, these kinds of condescending comments are a fact of life for many female self portrait artists far more successful than I, and have been written about many times before. I had never encountered them personally until now and, now that I have, perhaps I can grimly consider that I have arrived. It won’t impact what I photograph, what I express in my images or what I aspire to in my work. It is a comment that I hope never to hear again but, I suspect I shall not be that fortunate.