How do you photograph someone the culture has already crowned? Weber’s answer here is to make the metaphor literal and see what survives the joke: a tall rhinestone crown spiking above Aretha Franklin’s curled hair, a star-tipped scepter held in one ringed fist, teardrop earrings swinging, a dark fur wrap slipping at her shoulders. The Queen of Soul, cast as a queen. It should tip straight into camp, and it nearly does, except for the face.
Her expression is the whole picture. A ringed index finger rests against her lip, her eyes cut sideways with a look amused, appraising and entirely unfooled by the costume. This is the real pleasure of it: the photograph knows it is a photograph, knows the props are props, and lets its subject in on the knowing. Franklin wears the crown the way a true sovereign might, as something she could set down whenever she pleased, because the authority was never in the tin and glass.
Weber, who spent the 1980s shaping how America looked at its own bodies and idols, treats a singer with the wit he brought to athletes and film stars, staging the icon while quietly puncturing the staging. The gelatin silver print earns its keep: deep blacks in the fur and the blurred foliage behind, a full run of grays across skin and satin, hard white sparks where light strikes each stone of the crown. It is a portrait of power that lets you watch the sitter decide, gladly, to be amused by it.
How do you photograph someone the culture has already crowned? Weber’s answer here is to make the metaphor literal and see what survives the joke: a tall rhinestone crown spiking above Aretha Franklin’s curled hair, a star-tipped scepter held in one ringed fist, teardrop earrings swinging, a dark fur wrap slipping at her shoulders. The Queen of Soul, cast as a queen. It should tip straight into camp, and it nearly does, except for the face.
Her expression is the whole picture. A ringed index finger rests against her lip, her eyes cut sideways with a look amused, appraising and entirely unfooled by the costume. This is the real pleasure of it: the photograph knows it is a photograph, knows the props are props, and lets its subject in on the knowing. Franklin wears the crown the way a true sovereign might, as something she could set down whenever she pleased, because the authority was never in the tin and glass.
Weber, who spent the 1980s shaping how America looked at its own bodies and idols, treats a singer with the wit he brought to athletes and film stars, staging the icon while quietly puncturing the staging. The gelatin silver print earns its keep: deep blacks in the fur and the blurred foliage behind, a full run of grays across skin and satin, hard white sparks where light strikes each stone of the crown. It is a portrait of power that lets you watch the sitter decide, gladly, to be amused by it.