LEVIATHANS behind the scenes: The Siren’s Song

The sea monster for my first LEVIATHANS shoot was torn between two worlds. Sirens have often been mistaken for a kind of mermaid, sitting upon a rocky shore or swimming very nearby, luring sailors to their deaths with its song. In later Greek mythology folklore, Sirens are sometimes portrayed as aquatic and mermaid-like, and in fact, the Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Romanian, and Portuguese words for “mermaid” are Sirena, Sirène, Sirena, Syrena, Sirenă and Sereia. Even in biology, the order Sirenia is comprised of fully aquatic mammals, including the dugong and manatee.

John William Waterhouse, Odysseus and the Sirens (1891)

The Sirens were actually portrayed as three bird-women parented by the river god Achelous and Chthon, otherwise known as Mother Earth. These dangerous beauties resided in a flowery meadow on an island, perpetually calling after their father who had gone to the sea and left them all behind. Another story had them banished to the island (possibly the Isle of Capri) after losing a singing contest with the Muses, and so they took out their frustrations by luring sailors to swim ashore, pouncing on them and ripping their flesh with their talons, then adding their bones to the piles already littering the island. Yet another tells of their ultimate demise, throwing themselves into the ocean after Odysseus passed without succumbing to their song.

August Rodin, Crouching Woman (1881)

I had also recently seen Auguste Rodin’s Crouching Woman (1881), a beautiful sculpture at the Musée Rodin in Paris. The dark shine of its surface makes me feel like I’m at the bottom of the ocean. It is still considered one of his greatest achievements, and in fact, Octave Mirbeau, an avid Rodin collector and supporter, referred to this sculpture as “my frog,” which I found to be quite serendipitous for my purposes! This figure was also included in his larger work The Gates of Hell, a bronze portal meant for the Musée des Arts Decoratifs which he never finished. In it, she represents one of the lost souls being judged in the Last Judgment—also quite an interesting connection to my newly created endangered species.

Marie Vaccarello, Siren on set

I cast one of my favorite models, Marie Vaccarello, as my Siren. Marie has this built-in sweetness to her that is very disarming, which made her perfect for my Siren’s song. So innocent looking, right?

Though they were clearly not considered sea deities, their story and their origin certainly starts and ends in the ocean. But just like they were torn between earth and ocean, both by nature and by cultural evolutions, I decided to reconnect the siren to the sea by combining its suborder Alcae (coastal birds which nest on sea cliffs and “fly” underwater to catch fish) with another sea monster, Cecaelia—a largely Japanese octopus person (dating back as far as Hokusai) most frequently shown as a woman with octopus or squid tentacles for legs. As my raptor-like Siren somehow lost its ability to feed on men, it evolved into a diving bird, and our captured specimen had just been thrown this octopus at feeding time. We had a lot of fun on the shoot, including a series of alternate takes wearing these really weird aviator-style goggles.

And just in case you were wondering—yes, she is holding a real octopus. What a great sport!

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