In the afternoon of the same day, with the same team, we struck the grey and pulled velvet down behind her. The morning had been commercial — clean light, sculpted silhouettes, the architecture of fashion. The afternoon belonged to something else entirely. We had time and a model willing to play, so we made the work I most like to make: fine art, theatrical, painterly, indebted to the canvas before the camera.
The reference was Richard III. Not the historical king but the theatrical one — the schemer who soliloquises to the audience, who entertains us with his cruelty, who treads on the bodies of the men he has dispatched. There is a long English tradition of painting actors in that role. Hogarth painted Garrick as Richard III in 1745; we were working in the same lineage, with one contemporary intervention — the burst of black powder at the temple, the violence of the mind made literal.
The wardrobe is severe. Black tailoring, lace at the throat, a sabre held first horizontal then vertical, an antique globe at her shoulder for empire's sake. Sasha sits enthroned with her heel pressed against the cheek of the fallen man at her feet. The composition is operatic, and so is she.
Lighting was tenebrist — a single source, hard fall-off, the velvet swallowing everything that did not need to be seen. This is the register I prefer. The morning's work taught me to control light cleanly; the afternoon's lets me use it to lie convincingly. Both have their place. Both were on the call sheet today.
With thanks again to the team who made the day possible:
