Half Prada, 2003; fom the High Fashion Crime Scenes series, Melanie Pullen, chromogenic print
© Melanie Pullen
Transcript
[haunting experimental music]
MELANIE PULLEN: I’ve always worked with things that get into my head and haunt me.
MALE NARRATOR: Bathed in yellow light, a young, well-dressed woman hovers above the ground. She appears suspended, but by what? In the full version of this photo, you would find that this subject is actually hanging…by a noose. The artist, Melanie Pullen, explains:
MELANIE PULLEN: Half Prada is part of a very large series I did called High Fashion Crime Scenes, which was inspired by a moment I had when I came across a body of crime scene photography, and it impacted me greatly. [music ends] It horrified me in a way. Over time I became desensitized to it. I became very interested in the details of early crime scene photography, such as the makeup of the room, or what the victim is wearing, and these different minute parts of the photo.
MALE NARRATOR: As the title suggests, the model wears Prada. Her pale bare legs dangle from under a crimson pleated skirt, and she wears a pair of white pointed-toe pumps with red ankle straps, one of which is mysteriously undone. Why did Pullen combine high fashion with dark subject matter?
MELANIE PULLEN: This is a little morbid, but in these situations of your final moment, people often dressed for a suicide or a funeral; [haunting experimental music] there’s this idea of remembrance. So there was always these great uniforms or outfits that I was coming across in these early crime scene photographs. Recreating these crime scenes, I was able to use the fashion as the ultimate distraction so you’re not really seeing something violent. You’re kind of reading a book. It’s a little like a fairytale. You go back to like the history of fairy tales, a lot of them are very dark. Those are the stories I’m very interested in.
[music ends]