Being a model is a lot like this:
Fig. 1: Photographer
And like this:
Fig. 2: Makeup artist.
And this:
Fig. 3: Hairstylist.
It’s hot tools being waved near sensitive body parts, it’s the sensation of brushes on your eyelid skin, it’s hair pulling, it’s semi-public semi-nudity and the contortions of posing. But mostly it’s being pointed at, and people looking at you, but at the same time, not really.
The upside? You get to become extraordinary versions of yourself for brief periods of time. It’s like being Cindy Sherman, except you’re getting paid (and you’re not making the trite gender commentary).
Tuesday I shot at Matador Beach in Malibu. I worried a lot about rattlesnakes, but didn’t see any. The magazine was Greek, so everyone had impressive, storied names: the photographer was Vassilis and — even better — the stylist was called Iphigenia.
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Iphigenia made gladiator sandals by hand. So I liked her immediately. At the end of the shoot, Iphigenia’s sandals were so universally complimented that she was moved to offer them to the three of us models as gifts. I’ve been wearing them daily since.
It was one long day. The first picture in my camera is of the sunrise, looking down Hollywood Blvd., just before I went inside the Roosevelt Hotel to meet the team. The last is the the sunset, which came 14 hours later, just as we were returning to the city. In between, the team, the two other models, and I completed eight shots. (As editorials go, this is not a breakneck pace. My 13-year-old room-mate, for instance, shot 28 looks in four hours this morning. But I can respect a perfectionist when I meet one.)
Since it was a beach, we had beach hair: Beach hair, like makeup tips that involve putting lipgloss anywhere but your lips, and “easy up-dos” that take two years of hair school to pull off, is a thing that exists only inside the pages of fashion magazines, because if you actually saw someone with a scraggly troll mop sauntering down the beach, you’d find it discomfiting.
This is Rachael, one of my co-models. She rocked.
Vassilis was the kind of photographer who would try each picture various ways. Shooting close-in with a regular lens, shooting from 100 yards away with a long, ash grey telephoto; from a vantage on top of a rock, from the bottom of a wooden staircase; with his subject standing in front of rocks, in front of surf, or on a private beach patronised by only two shirtless high school boys, whose game of catch self-consciously arced closer and closer to the photo’s range with every coy toss. Whenever the boys got too close, Vassilis would stop shooting, puff out his lips, and shield his camera from the sun to inspect the frames so far. The boys would slowly slink back, finding a fencepost or a beach towel suddenly compelling.
Iphigenia stood slightly behind Vassilis, miming instructions when the wind or the distance or the language barrier stood in the way of oral communications. She would twist and turn in one-legged arabesques, swinging her arms as though twirling invisible scarves through the air. Rachael and I copied her, our sundresses billowing in the wind.
Then Vassilis frowned and came running over. “You are moving your arms too much,” he said. “You need to be like, the things, they are like the witches? But good? How do you say — fairies.”
“Cool. Shakespeare,” said Rachael.
Vassilis nodded. “Yes. Fairy. And sexy, but no lesbian.”
Sometimes Vassilis and Iphigenia found the best picture on top of a rock.
On the leg of the third model, peeking out of the hemline of one of the briefer numbers, was a vicious scar. I have a few scars myself — my worst job was selling knives; I quit the day the Petite Chef took an 8-stitch slice out of my left forearm — and I tend to ask people about theirs. (I try not to be all creepy, Kate-Winslet-in-Heavenly-Creatures about it, but scars have stories.)
“Oh, a boyfriend — an ex boyfriend — did that to me,” the model said matter-of-factly. “I was riding in the car with him, and I asked him a question and he wanted me to shut up. So he screamed at me and then he stabbed me. You know.” She paused. “You think you’re in love, you’re young, you believe it when they say they’re sorry.”
The makeup artist, Marissa, put a little foundation on the model’s thigh, and then she clambered up a rock to take the picture.
1 response so far ↓
bridie // December 13, 2008 at 6:42 am |
Hi nice blog.
Explain how Cindy Sherman is trite?
Shes an effing genius.