Studio Magazine, Printemps Été 2011
Given the times — and that her chosen profession is photography — Wendy Bevan’s arsenal is pretty lightweight. She does not own a digital SLR that was purchased for a five-digit price tag, nor does she lug cumbersome flashguns and tripods around. Her work has none of the slick minimalism so ubiquitous in contemporary fashion photography and her aesthetic is as far away from Terry-Richardson-branded studio gloss as you can get. Instead, her photographs look as though they’ve been collecting dust in an attic for a very long time. This isn’t surprising given that Bevan uses polaroid film, a medium that renders subjects soft and diffused. Its tonal range and colour saturation are limited, the muted palette inherently painterly and Romantic. Polaroid film is susceptible to leaks of light and imperfections — and it is imperfections that make Bevan’s work so compelling.
Bevan’s characters’ imperfections are manifested in their misty lassitude. They loll about in powdered morning light, glide through opiate afternoons and collapse, neurasthenic, to the hissing of summer lawns. In other photos chemically starched characters skulk about in circus-burlesque scenes that wouldn’t look out of place in a Fellini film. In fact, Bevan’s work seems strongly connected to Italian neorealism — one of her shoots for a 2009 issue of Italian Vogue pays obvious homage to the movement with the title ‘Neorealistic Atmosphere’. There’s the same melange of beauty and tragedy; women are depicted as confident yet bored, glamorous yet sullen. For Bevan, the soft blur of polaroid functions as a fog of repressed emotions, regret and debilitating privilege.
Vogue Sposa Italia, Printemps Été 2011
Muse Magazine, Miu Miu Automne Hiver 2008
The pervasive sense of lethargy in Bevan’s work is juxtaposed with theatrical elements. Just as Cindy Sherman wears wigs and uses elaborate make-up to transform herself into archetypal female characters, Bevan’s women don oversized costume jewellery, feathers, turbans and veils in ensembles that are part Kate Bush, part vamp. And, like Sherman, Bevan’s images have feminist undertones. Wearing colourful outfits Bevan’s women provocatively recline on lounge chairs and sprawl across brass beds — despite lives doused in domesticity they empower themselves through masquerade and seduction. A preoccupation with femme fatales in the sphere of espionage can be seen in the September 2009 issue of Test Magazine, where Bevan photographed ‘Agent Lynch’ in a shoot that conjures images of 70s rebellion and Barbarella.
Italian Marie Claire, Printemps Été 2011
Bevan’s venture into the world of celluloid (a short entitled ‘Reaching for the Moon’, which was inspired by the S/S 2010 circus-themed fashion shoot that she did for Italian Marie Claire) is similarly littered with symbols of deceptions and intrigue —playing cards, clowns, puppets and white doves. Upon first watch it seems sadomasochistic — one of the film’s opening shots shows a male magician pulling cards out of a top hat strategically placed on his female assistant’s exposed thigh, while in a later scene a clothed man strokes a naked women with a cello bow, as though she is his instrument. At the same time, however, the women are bewitching. They have something of a hypnotic sway over the men — many of whom are dressed in drag with face paint and tutus. The notion of the transgendered man, as opposed to the macho man, contrasts with the raw sensuality of Bevan’s female characters. They wholly embrace their femininity with their sultry stares and uninhibited dancing. The lunar reference in the film’s title is also of note — the moon being one of the oldest and most enduring symbols of femininity.
But Bevan’s feminist leanings aren’t as overt as Sherman’s. When she’s not taking snaps, Bevan is a burlesque dancer and a jazz singer — the props and costumes she uses are more than likely things she had lying around her bohemian apartment. The aesthetic of her images isn’t forced — it’s what is familiar to her. If anything, Bevan’s work operates at a level of self-conscious melodrama that is intensely adolescent. She catches exactly the cast of a certain late-adolescent image repertoire: turbid desire, awkwardness — all manner of teenage imperfection — mixed with a botched, impossible nostalgia for childhood, the whole excitable amalgam expressed as Gothicism. Indeed, in one interview Bevan claims that she was inspired to start her career as a photographer after looking at old family photos. And the photograph with the most sentimental value to her? A faded image of her mother aged nineteen.
Wendy Bevan – www.wendybevan.com
