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.

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LEVIATHANS: Naga

Fig. 45.—Monachus Mare, lured into deep sea cage with walrus blubber, June 25, 1871. The head clearly means to trick prey into not seeing its true size. And to think that J.S. believed it an Architeuthis dux!

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LEVIATHANS: Siren

Fig. 87.—Sirenia Alcaecaelia, caught in our fishing net, July 16, 1871. Note the partial metamorphosis of the spine. One of only three known specimens ever captured alive!

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WONDERLAND behind the scenes: The FRAGMENT Shots

For each of my photo series, I like to supplement the really orchestrated shoots with some spontaneously captured images that I like to call FRAGMENTS. Sometimes these FRAGMENTS happen before the thought behind a photo series even comes along, even planting the seed for an entire concept shoot. Other times, I will happen upon a scene so appropriate for whatever it is that I’m working on, I can’t resist taking yet another photograph.

The opening FRAGMENT shot in the WONDERLAND series, “Hotel Wonderland”, is a bit of both. I had completed the “Alice Falls” shot, and so I was digging for inspiration to help me continue developing the idea. On a trip to NYC, I decided to go sightseeing on one of those double-decker buses, just to take some pictures and see if anything caught my attention.

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WONDERLAND: Alice’s Mushroom

Her name had always been written on that magical mushroom.

Photographer/Creative Director: HUSVAR

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WONDERLAND behind the scenes: A Mad Cocktail Party

As soon as I had finished making “Alice Falls” (see A Different Kind of Rabbit-Hole for that story), I remember feeling very certain that I wasn’t done pursuing this idea. But my Alice’s mind had just disintegrated—what could possibly happen after that? Well, nothing. It was so inconvenient that I been inspired by the very first big event of the original Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland story. So I did what every artist does when they run into a question they can’t answer: I changed the question. What happened to my Alice before she falls?

Once I had the basic idea for the story (see My Version of the Story for that—um, story), I knew that there was only one event from the book that could encapsulate the events that sent my Alice over the edge, and that was the Mad Tea-Party.

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WONDERLAND: Alice Stripped

Stripped of her former life, Alice at last finds bliss in an illusory Wonderland.

Photographer/Creative Director: HUSVAR
Model: Brooke Rewa
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: 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!