Ella Rose Muse: the story: Gregory Brown and John Evans

Wednesday 29 September 2010

Gregory Brown and John Evans

I'd admired both of their portfolios pretty much since I'd started modelling. We'd all spoken plenty of times before about potential bookings and finally managed to get the diaries together recently, which I was really excited about! I love their quirky props, the twisted shapes, the counterpoint in their work at which classicism meets weirdness... and the way the light wraps so beautifully around the models they photograph (I should probably mention that while I'm talking about both of them, they do shoot separately, one-on-one; for this shoot, I shot with Gregory while John shot with another model, then we swapped half way). I couldn't wait to see what location was in store for me; I'd originally been booked for a studio shoot, but things were changed at the last minute and it turned out to be an enormous, half derelict house, bought by a friend of Gregory and in the gradual process of being restored... So, huge scope for interesting shots!

Here are some of me by Gregory Brown (there are a couple of shots which appear in colour and in b&w, as I'm struggling to choose in these cases... Please comment if you are more decisive than me and have a favourite!):

Stairs:

Strings:

Pointes:

Bongos in the window:

John Evans also sent me some photos. We couldn't resist the purple wall:

More pointe shoes:

And some doorways:

And THEN.... It turned out that the guy whose house we were shooting in was in fact a British champion helicopter pilot. When he offered me a quick spin in his purple helicopter, I could hardly say no, could I? England drives me mad sometimes, but seeing it from the sky is a beautiful reminder of how wonderful the land is. Such an amazing experience!!! These are from my camera:

My hand - I'm flying the thing!!

The location (and my little brum brum):

Helicopter!

I didn't actually realise Russell was quite the pro he was until afterwards... Bit scary when at the end of the flight around Warwickshire he claimed not to be very good at landing on grass, and seemed quite worried, telling me to brace myself for a skiddy landing, etc.... Eeek! What a tease. I didn't even feel the touchdown. Ha!

Walter De La Mare, 'The Listeners'

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Natasha Khan/Bat for Lashes, 'Horse and I'

Got woken in the night,
by a mystic golden light.
My head soaked in river water.
I had been dressed in a coat of armor. They called
a horse out of the woodland.
"Take her there, through the desert shores."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear.
You're the chosen one, there's no turning back now."

The smell of redwood giants.
The banquet for the shadows.
Horse and I, we're dancers in the dark.
Came upon the headdress.
It was gilded, dark and golden.
The children sang.
I was so afraid I took it to my head and prayed.
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."
They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."

Mark Doty, 'A Display of Mackerel'

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales’

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

—nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

of heaven’s template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler’s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer—would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They’d prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even now

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don’t care they’re dead

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn’t care that they were living:

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

which is the price of gleaming.

Kate Clanchy, 'Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell'

This is simply to inform you:

that the thickest line in the kink of my hand
smells like the feel of an old school desk,
the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;

that beneath the spray of my expensive scent
my armpits sound a bass note strong
as the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;

that the wet flush of my fear is sharp
as the taste of an iron pipe, midwinter,
on a child's hot tongue; and that sometimes,

in a breeze, the delicate hairs on the nape
of my neck, just where you might bend
your head, might hesitate and brush your lips,

hold a scent frail and precise as a fleet
of tiny origami ships, just setting out to sea.

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Wednesday 29 September 2010

Gregory Brown and John Evans