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[Click photo to see a larger (better) version]
An Italian “artist”, who was doing a "performance art" piece saturated with her ideology, was found raped and murdered in Turkey. She and a female friend had been traveling around Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East in wedding dresses on a peace trip to show a “marriage between different peoples and nations.”
The ironic thing is that it is a commercial photographer - whose name is credited at the bottom of the photo on the New York Times article - who makes the most artistic piece related to her.
The shot is beautifully captured by photographer Sirio Magnabosco. The sepia tone, the perspective shot, the sinewy railings mimicking the ruffles on her dress and the undulating water, light and shadow cavorting on the ground, the light shining up on her (how did he manage that!) giving her a sanctified glow, and the light-grey metallic poles with their own repeated “ruffles” as perhaps a reflection of her, all add up to an atmospheric, richly symbolic portrait. And she's been elevated by standing on a small pedestal. She could be from a silent film (although the colored flag – is it Canadian? – rules this out). And there is an Art Deco element to all this, with the rigid metallic lines and shadows and the garage-like structure at the back, which are nonetheless softened by Magnabosco’s ethereal shot.
While I contemplated this beautiful portrait of hers, I couldn't but be struck at how iconic her photographer has made her. She could be a ship figurine, or one of those luxury car mascots. Or even one of the thousands of Italian saints who stands for something – Our Lady of the Modern Age?
Her gown is reminiscent of the great Paul Poiret designs of the early 20th century, and the couturier designers from Byblos look like they went to some effort to create it.
I went to her official website to see her work (click on "opere" to see samples), and it was nothing but worse than mediocre.
So, this woman, who got regal treatment from her designers and her photographer, was nothing but a mediocre artist, doing the quintessential "performance art" that such artists resort to when they can do nothing else.
Rather than bask in the admiration of the men in her European country – Byblos is an Italian fashion design company whose two chief designers are men, and the photographer is also Italian – she went to a strange land where she was received in the most abysmal way possible for a woman by one of their (foreign to her) men.
Her gown got soiled and her body tarnished, and she lost her life.