Behind her, in a cramped tiled bathroom, we are close enough to read the electrical outlet on the wall and the toiletries crowding the edge of the porcelain sink. She is naked, her back to us, dark hair falling to the shoulders, one knee braced against the basin. Ahead of her a mirrored cabinet folds into panels, so her face returns two and three times over, each reflection lifting a lipstick to the same mouth. We see her only from behind and, at once, everywhere in the glass.
The set-up is pure theatre disguised as accident. Everything ordinary, the square white tiles, the grubby grout, the domestic clutter, is arranged so that a private ritual becomes a performance staged for the camera and for herself. The multiplied reflections turn a single body into a small cast, front and back, subject and image, the woman making herself up to be seen. It is a picture about the manufacture of glamour, caught in the room where glamour is assembled each morning, without a studio in sight.
Made in Los Angeles in 2011, the portrait shows this photographer working against his reputation for sunlit ease, trading the beach for a cramped interior and its flat bathroom glow. The actress is treated less as a face to sell than as a collaborator in a game about seeing. Printed in gelatin silver, the image keeps its grainy, available-light intimacy intact, greys sliding to shadow at the corners, the tiles holding a soft sheen. A hand-made print, it feels less like fashion than a page from a private diary.
Behind her, in a cramped tiled bathroom, we are close enough to read the electrical outlet on the wall and the toiletries crowding the edge of the porcelain sink. She is naked, her back to us, dark hair falling to the shoulders, one knee braced against the basin. Ahead of her a mirrored cabinet folds into panels, so her face returns two and three times over, each reflection lifting a lipstick to the same mouth. We see her only from behind and, at once, everywhere in the glass.
The set-up is pure theatre disguised as accident. Everything ordinary, the square white tiles, the grubby grout, the domestic clutter, is arranged so that a private ritual becomes a performance staged for the camera and for herself. The multiplied reflections turn a single body into a small cast, front and back, subject and image, the woman making herself up to be seen. It is a picture about the manufacture of glamour, caught in the room where glamour is assembled each morning, without a studio in sight.
Made in Los Angeles in 2011, the portrait shows this photographer working against his reputation for sunlit ease, trading the beach for a cramped interior and its flat bathroom glow. The actress is treated less as a face to sell than as a collaborator in a game about seeing. Printed in gelatin silver, the image keeps its grainy, available-light intimacy intact, greys sliding to shadow at the corners, the tiles holding a soft sheen. A hand-made print, it feels less like fashion than a page from a private diary.