Photographic reconstructions

Not too long ago I was involved in a  reconstruction of Helmut Newton's Naked and Dressed. (Sie Kommen) Stuart Bentley was the photographer. We also did another couple of shots inspired by Newton. Indeed Newton is  iconic, at some point or another many photographers involved in art nude will have a go at making work at the very least influenced by Newton. The idea of a slightly flawed body, for example, is Newton-derived and I personally find it fascinating.

But let's consider this idea of reconstructing a photographic work. My background is in art and archaeology, so I am very au fait with the idea of reconstruction. I have also been teaching performance  theory for some years and in dance one of the main issues is that of remaking  someone's work i.e. recreating it, representing it, reinterpreting it, even reviving it.

Reconstruction is a most familiar concept in archaeology. Many people would say that this is what archaeology is about: through digging and piecing things together the past is reconstructed. But how does this reconstruction take place? The 1990s saw a revolution in archaeology, troubling its tenets of supreme objectivity. Archaeologists began to talk about subjectivity and multiplicity of interpretations  as a myth.

 Former Guggenheim Foundation Fellow Muriel Topaz has asked very pertinent questions with regard to the act of reconstruction , in particular "authentic restaging" of dance . How do we capture style, she asks. Does a reconstructor have the right to change the choreography?  what can each new performer legitimately bring to a role? what is the performer's appropriate contribution to the reconstruction?

I think such questions have a value in photographic reconstructions. Let's look briefly at the Newton's reconstruction I did with Stuart. The first thing to note is that Stuart decided to work with a mature model. "I interpret Newton's depiction of sensuality as referring to mature sensuality. Thus I want a mature model in my reconstruction" . This is what he told me in his first email which led to my booking. Next was the decision to use only one model in four different poses to achieve the effect of four models posing together, as in the original - this was the result of photoshopping. So Stuart acted like a reconstructor who changes the details of the choreography, in Muriel Topaz' terms. What about the performer's contribution? The performer is me, in this instance. What I felt was that what was required of me was not simply copying the attitudes of the four models but to project a viable interpretation of their mood. I knew that one of the models had a fierce expression and I did my best to re-embody that. The most important element of the composition, in my view,  was the dynamism of the walk and I tried hard to convery that  dynamism.

Stuart Bentley, as photographer and director, imparted and I,  as model/performer, portrayed the meaning of each attitude and gesture in relation to the whole. The reconstruction firmly remains an interpretation, located in the 21st century. But that is the nature of reconstruction on the whole.