On pomegranates

One from a while back.

We had an extraordinary vintage dress, a madly beautiful and moderately frightening Philip Treacy mask, a wonderful model and some stuffed birds.  And we needed to tie them all together.

And the solution my favourite occasional collaborator for this kind of thing — Siwan Hill — came up with to achieve this was pomegranates.

The Greek myth of Persephone centres on a girl stolen from her mum and swept down to the underworld by Hades (it varies with every telling).  There, she lived in darkness until her mum found her and tried to get her out.

Hades agreed to give her back, what with her being a minor and that being a bit icky and all.

But Hades, ever the trickster, also gave the poor girl the mythological equivalent of a trail mix bar for the journey home, whereupon Persephone, never having been the sharpest knife in the drawer, wolfed down some pomegranate seeds.  And thus became doomed for ever to commute between the basement and the penthouse or, if you prefer, between summer and winter.

We’ll give the Greeks a C for plot, but anyway.

 

Creative direction, hair and makeup: Siwan Hill

Photography: Scott Rylander (obviously)

Model: Jenny Maxwell of band Strange Fruit

Dress and jacket designed by Joanne Fleming

Philip Treacy custom-made mask and props by kind courtesy of Amaury Blow

Additional art direction: Laura Oaten

Assistant: Bernard Coughlan

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Oestrogen

As end-of-year shows for an all-female cast go, they don’t come much more tense (think of an elastic band that’s just about to split and smack you in the face) than Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba.

Shots from the Court Theatre Training Company’s take on a tale of matriarchs, repression, men unseen and pride at the Courtyard Theatre.  Shot through gauze, no less…

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Light and shadow

Shots from the English National Opera’s incredibly beautiful new production of Tchaikovsky’s opera, The Queen of Spades.

The show opens on 6 June and runs for 9 performances.

If you would like to buy the images for personal use or for rights-managed (editorial only) use, please click here (link opens in a new window) for a full selection of images from Queen of Spades.  Click “add to cart” for the image(s) you want and choose between personal and editorial licensing.

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