Pete November 10, 2018

Richard Avedon, Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent (1981)

 

 

A woman lies on her side against a plain floor and plain background of the same neutral colour and material, gazing into the camera lens, naked except for a bracelet and the massive coils of a Burmese python wrapped around her legs, waist, and shoulders. She appears calm, even serene. Both she and the animal are long and sinuous—her own snake-like form is accentuated the cropping of the photograph at her knees which produces the illusion that her body might somehow run on. She is pale, evenly and softly lit from a source which must be positioned outside the upper left corner of the frame since her face, arm, waist, and knee cast slight shadows the right. The subtle tonal environment of light and shade leads to a study of textures, materials, lights, and of subtle distinctions between skin and scale, body and background. The scene is undisturbed by action or event.

Or almost—looking very carefully reveals that in the midst of this scene of stillness the forked tongue of the snake flickers out to “kiss” the ear of the model—the tiniest sign of vital aliveness in an otherwise perfectly calm image.

Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent shot in 1981 is one of Avedon’s most famous and iconic photographs, yet it also departs from his usual style of the period, where he photographed both famous and unknown figures against a stark white backdrop with no contextual information. These portraits reveal Avedon as “radical and brutal,” his photographs exhibiting “a duality: they are photographs taken by a strong, complex personality, a photographer who possesses great humanity—and cold-bloodedness” (Avedon & Crenzien, 2014). Avedon’s portrait of Duke and Duchess of Windsor being one of the most famous, whereas is in Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent we see a return to the softer, more sensual fashion images typical of his earlier work.

Avedon’s images usually emerged out of lengthy studio sessions and in his own words “A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he (sic) is being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks.” (Avedon & Williams, 2004). This approach distinguished Avedon’s work from that of the American street photographers, such as Diane Arbus. Nevertheless, this method enables him to produce images that remain with the viewer – they have punctum. The punctum in Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent is the flickering tongue of the snake caressing Kinski’s ear.

Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida introduces and makes a key distinction between punctum and studium— the latter standing in for the general cultural, social, and historical context of meaning in images. Barthes defines punctum “is the sting, speck, cut, little hole—and also a cast of the dice. A photograph’s punctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)” (Barthes, 2012). Here the “pricked” nature of the punctum which Barthes defines with this physical metaphor, seems almost literally to be true as the snake’s tongue flicks against the model’s ear. In fact, the punctum could almost be redefined as the lick of the snake’s tongue—the moment when the totally unpredictable, thrilling, ever-so-slightly dangerous event occurs and is captured on camera. The serenity of the model only serves to heighten the intensity of this flicker of punctuating action.

Taking a boarder view, Avedon’s Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent is typical of the way in which Avedon changed the traditional fashion image from one in which the model appeared as little more than a “clothes horse” whose role was to passively exhibit fashion ensembles, to one in which the model was treated as a subject in their own right. Traditional posing had been static, in this image Avedon moves away from this convention in multiple ways: firstly, by presenting the model nude, clothed only by a reptile and bracelet; second, by having the model lay down supine and be cropped at the knee; and third, by capturing an unpredictable chance encounter.

The portrait emerges out of the juxtaposition of the human form of Nastassja Kinski with the reptilian form of the snake. The imminent threat which the snake seems to present an intense contrast with the vulnerable body of the female subject and serenity of her expression —but the result is psychological intensity and interest, something which keeps the image alive and interesting to look at closely.    This juxtaposition also produces confrontation between a public image and what Avedon sees (or perceives) in the subject. Kinski was familiar at this as one of the most beautiful women of the time, who whilst she had exploited in her earlier roles, was beginning to gain control of her career and image. Avedon has succeed in placing her in a situation that produces unexpected sensations.

With this juxtaposition, Avedon’s photograph raises fundamental questions about the power of photography itself. Speaking of his early experience with photography, Avedon recalled how “all the photographs in our family album were built on some kind of lie about who we were and revealed a truth about who we wanted to be” (Avedon & Mooallem, 2017). Throughout his career, Avedon negotiated this balance between truth and fantasy very skilfully. It is this quality which makes Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent such a compelling picture since it manages to tread the fine line between fact and fiction. While its lighting and tonalities all describe a real relationship between body and space, the event we witness has the mark of the unreal. The portrait appears to cast Kinski as Eve, falling for the temptation of the serpent, however, Avedon has captured that precise moment where it is clear that this Eve is not interested in what the serpent has to offer, nor she frightened by the power the serpent wields over her Avedon perhaps saw and captured what Nastassja Kinski was sub-consciously trying to achieve within her career and image – to do things on her own terms. Something that would still take a while come. (1008 words)

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