WONDERLAND behind the scenes: Kill the Rabbit!

So at this point, I had built the Hotel Wonderland of my dreams (dark, I know) and remade Alice into a woman who would actually live there. Next, I needed some guests for her mad party. Attending the original party were Alice, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse. Seeing how mad my Alice turned out to be, I skipped the Mad Hatter. And assuming that the rest of the Hotel Wonderland was as decrepit as this particular unit, I left the mice in the walls where they belong . . . which left me with the March Hare.

As you can see from the above shot of the completed set (read Building Hotel Wonderland for that story), I had thought ahead enough to book three different “models” to fill the role of the March Hare, each very different from the next, to see which one would end up working the best. The realistic small brown bunny sitting on the high chair just was too small and harmless to attend the cocktail hour I had planned. And the medium-sized pink one just screamed Easter and drew too much attention away from the hostess. So the big (but otherwise nondescript) wallflower was invited.

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THE COLLECTOR: Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí
Rinoceronte vestido con puntillas (Rhinoceros Dressed In Lace) (1956)
Bronze cast

Sometimes, fiction really is stranger than truth.

The story goes something like this… It was the year 1515, and Pope Leo X had been sent a very unusual gift by Manuel I, then King of Portugal—a pet rhinoceros. Unfortunately, the ship carrying his present sank before it reached him in Florence, and so the rhino went down with it. But before it sank to the bottom of the ocean, the rhino had the honor of being the first ever seen on European soil, where it was sketched during a brief pit stop in Lisbon.

As it was a largely unknown creature, Europeans at the time had little information beyond their imaginations as to what a rhinoceros actually looked like. What they did know was what the ancient Roman Pliny had written about it—that it was a fierce creature and a mortal enemy of the elephant.

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WONDERLAND: Alice Escapes

Willing to do anything to return to her dreams, Alice commits to a dark and final escape.

Photographer/Creative Director: HUSVAR
Model: Brooke Rewa
Set Designer: Bryan Lohr
Wardrobe Stylist: Andrew Slyder
Photo Assistant: Luke Copping
Production Assistant: Nadejda Petrova
Lighting Consultant: Chris Santucci
Makeup Stylist: Anna Malskaya
Hair Stylist: Josselyn Scott
Wardrobe Assistant: Monika Byrne
Assistants: Laura Sargent & Emilee Hoelscher

Visit WONDERLAND to view the photo series and to read behind-the-scenes features!

WONDERLAND behind the scenes: Remaking Alice

Casting Brooke Rewa as Alice was definitely one of the easy decisions I got to make for this series. I’ve worked with Brooke on other shoots before and since, and on top of being really easy on the eyes, she’s just a great model to work with.

It had always been my intention to somehow blend the youthful storybook look of the original Alice into that of my depressive ex-debutante. My first step was to put her in a shinier (and shorter) version of the original dress—a sexy little something that Alice herself might have worn to high school prom.

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WONDERLAND: Melancholy Alice

Unable to transform her hellish reality into the reunion of her memories, Alice succumbs to her melancholy.

Photographer/Creative Director: HUSVAR
Model: Brooke Rewa
Set Designer: Bryan Lohr
Wardrobe Stylist: Andrew Slyder
Photo Assistant: Luke Copping
Production Assistant: Nadejda Petrova
Lighting Consultant: Chris Santucci
Makeup Stylist: Anna Malskaya
Hair Stylist: Josselyn Scott
Wardrobe Assistant: Monika Byrne
Assistants: Laura Sargent & Emilee Hoelscher

Visit WONDERLAND to view the photo series and to read behind-the-scenes features!

ICONS: Floria Sigismondi

The creative process is such an mysterious phenomenon, equally elusive to scientists as it is to artists. While the human experience demands that we strive to understand it, our own inner workings will forever remain a gray space, an unknown method of connections with or without resolution. In my blog series ICONS, I will attempt to examine my creative process as I divulge my greatest sources of inspiration, my biggest influences, and what drives me the most as an artist.

© Floria Sigismondi

The photographer and director Floria Sigismondi has a unique style that continues to develop throughout her career. Her dark contrast-driven imagery has a nouveau-surrealist feel to it that makes it intoxicating to experience. Each viewing is an opportunity to step into an alternate reality forcing you to reinterpret your own. Her work often contains political undertones, a challenge to question authority, and the social mores that define our culture.

Looking at some of her earliest work, the elements of her style were all present even if they hadn’t yet fully coalesced. Through the use of selective focusing and playing with time-scale, she not only created alternate universes, she created unique ways to experience these surrealist environments.

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WONDERLAND: Alice’s Party

Alice throws a mad cocktail party, hoping to conjure up her childhood dreams.

Photographer/Creative Director: HUSVAR
Model: Brooke Rewa
Set Designer: Bryan Lohr
Wardrobe Stylist: Andrew Slyder
Photo Assistant: Luke Copping
Production Assistant: Nadejda Petrova
Lighting Consultant: Chris Santucci
Makeup Stylist: Anna Malskaya
Hair Stylist: Josselyn Scott
Wardrobe Assistant: Monika Byrne
Assistants: Laura Sargent & Emilee Hoelscher
Model: Hollywood (as Dinah/The Cheshire Cat)

Visit WONDERLAND to view the photo series and to read behind-the-scenes features!

WONDERLAND behind the scenes: Building Hotel Wonderland

As my early sketch of the set will show you—and please forgive my stick-figure Alice!—the story always comes first for me. My Alice’s Tea Party has to happen someplace distinctively unmagical, so I chose an extraordinarily ordinary kitchen as the setting. Next, it drives the prop list. I selected objects that hinted at the original story (Dinah the cat, flamingo head faucet, hanging mushrooms, Wonderland sign on the fridge, rabbit in a highchair) and some that told my story (handgun, old electronics, machines, wires, dead rabbit with stuffed eyes). Only after all of that is taken care of do I think about technical issues like lighting (softbox and spots, in this case).

To play the sweet innocence of the original Alice aesthetic against the grungy, obsessive, and melancholy nature of my version, I ultimately decided to conjure up this kitchen as part of a dingy studio apartment at the fictitious Hotel Wonderland. At the time I drew the sketch, I wasn’t even sure whether I’d try to find an old house to use, or create the set from scratch. In the end, I just couldn’t imagine that I would find the right place anywhere but inside my head.

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THE COLLECTOR: Melodie Provenzano

I have always had a keen appreciation for fine art, from the work of known masters to the edgier underground names that skirt the edge of the mainstream art world. Photography and art have a long and intertwined history, and I avidly collect works from both mediums. In my blog series THE COLLECTOR, I will be featuring several pieces that I have collected, or pieces that I simply appreciate for their meaning and aesthetic beauty.

Melodie Provenzano
Bunny Ride, 2008
Acrylic and gold leaf on canvas, 48 by 48 inches

The iconography of the figurines in Bunny Ride was what grabbed me immediately—this naive ceramic bunny sitting on top of such a menacing menagerie. The warty toad and tusked boar are reminiscent of creatures from a Miyazaki Anime film (especially Princess Mononoke) and the razor-toothed shark is an exact likeness of a bathtub toy I had when I was young. The stage seems set for a drama about to unfold, one full of ominous and foreboding danger….

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WONDERLAND: Hotel Wonderland

Dreams have a way of turning into nightmares at the Hotel Wonderland.

Photographer/Creative Director: HUSVAR

Visit WONDERLAND to view the photo series and to read behind-the-scenes features!