One button, set low at the waist, is the only thing holding the black tuxedo jacket closed, and the whole picture depends on it. Above it the satin lapels fall open in a long, clean vertical, bare skin from throat to that single clasp, so that the jacket becomes less a garment than a curtain. Linda Evangelista sings with her eyes shut into a chromium microphone, and the button is the fulcrum on which her composure is balanced against her abandon.
The organization is nearly heraldic. Two raised hands, palms out and fingers spread, frame the head at equal height; the microphone stand rises dead centre, a silver column splitting the field in two. Against a plain grey ground the tonal drama is stark and simple: black wool, pale flesh, the machined gleam of the old grille. Her wind-lifted hair and clenched brow supply the only disorder, and the studio holds even that in careful suspension. Nothing is accidental, yet it reads as pure release.
Weber, who did as much as anyone to make fashion of the 1980s and 1990s a serious American subject, here lets a supermodel play a torch singer and photographs the performance straight, without irony. This gelatin silver print gives the fiction its full-bodied weight, the blacks deep and unbroken, the greys of the background soft as breath. The conceit is a nightclub; the truth is a portrait of concentration. She is not pretending to feel it. That, and one small button, is why we believe her.
One button, set low at the waist, is the only thing holding the black tuxedo jacket closed, and the whole picture depends on it. Above it the satin lapels fall open in a long, clean vertical, bare skin from throat to that single clasp, so that the jacket becomes less a garment than a curtain. Linda Evangelista sings with her eyes shut into a chromium microphone, and the button is the fulcrum on which her composure is balanced against her abandon.
The organization is nearly heraldic. Two raised hands, palms out and fingers spread, frame the head at equal height; the microphone stand rises dead centre, a silver column splitting the field in two. Against a plain grey ground the tonal drama is stark and simple: black wool, pale flesh, the machined gleam of the old grille. Her wind-lifted hair and clenched brow supply the only disorder, and the studio holds even that in careful suspension. Nothing is accidental, yet it reads as pure release.
Weber, who did as much as anyone to make fashion of the 1980s and 1990s a serious American subject, here lets a supermodel play a torch singer and photographs the performance straight, without irony. This gelatin silver print gives the fiction its full-bodied weight, the blacks deep and unbroken, the greys of the background soft as breath. The conceit is a nightclub; the truth is a portrait of concentration. She is not pretending to feel it. That, and one small button, is why we believe her.