Fall – Erwin Olaf
An accepted truism is that a great portrait photograph captures a fleeting moment of perfection and reveals honesty in the eyes of the sitter. In inimitable style, Erwin Olaf turns the tables on this concept in his recent series Fall (2008), in which he combines awkward portraits of young models with still-life images of foliage in painted vases. The plants are pert and spiky, the models droopy and unfocussed, their eyes partly closed. These are not the cute and perky teenagers of Benetton ads, dressed in rainbow-hued knitwear. Instead Olaf uses the palette of post-war austerity – washed-out colours in the natural hues of cork, straw, marble, teak and terracotta. The five female and five male models are draped in skin-toned clothes. Wearing tan and pale pink, Olaf’s models seem nude, though their emotions are camouflaged.
“I was intrigued by the idea of a portrait in which something is out-of-sync,” explains Erwin Olaf. “It became a new type of sexy, to photograph a beautiful model blinking at the wrong moment, using a camera angle that is slightly wrong. It is disturbing to see this incorrect fraction of a second frozen in a portrait. Yet with the still-lifes, there is a timeless aspect, since I could make tiny changes during the shoot, moving the plants a little bit to the left or to the right. When the portraits are seen on their own, they seem restless, but when they are placed next to the plants, they gain a more relaxed attitude.”
In the Fall series, the viewer remains uncertain of the true emotions of the slim models, the symbolism of the angular plants and the links between what could merely be seen as the botanical versus the suicidal. Given christian names that defy precise ethnic grouping, the models seem to be hovering in limbo, caught at a time when they are beyond feeling shy, self-conscious or exposed. Photographed up to their waists, they lean forward in expectation, all of them looking down, with the exception of Simon. While shown in various states of undress, in an under-vest, with shirt unbuttoned or clad in lingerie with a nipple peeking out, Olaf’s models are not vulnerable, despite their sense of hallucinogenic ambiguity. In any case, their partly-closed eyes gives them that "slightly dumb and stupid look" that Erwin says he sometimes seeks in prima donnas and male models.
A series which began with an outtake from a photo-shoot involving a beautiful young female model with her eyes half-closed, Fall is also the result of an artist tackling his own insecurities. "How can I simplify my language?”, asked Olaf. “What do I now look for in my photography? Why am I so intrigued by the shutter speed?”
Meanwhile, the splayed stems in Olaf’s still-lifes emerge from the slender necks of simple ceramic vases in muted tones. The stalks are cut or dried. The only living plant in the series is carnivorous. Each vase stands alone on a different minimalist timber table. In a lesson in subdued décor, the flat background textures are rough, made from a combination of reed matting, bamboo patterned wallpaper, pebbled concrete, brick veneer and coarse fabric. The surfaces are blushed, blemished and freckled, like skin.
The décor is clearly linked to two other recent projects by Erwin Olaf. Le Dernier Cri (The Latest Fashion, 2007) is a short film set in Paris in the spring of 2019. The film begins as an ode to European opulence, as the camera lovingly wanders through a spotless house decorated in stylish retro-chic. We hear a distant piano lesson, a housewife using a vacuum-cleaner, a house-fly buzzing as an omen of doom. Like the Venus fly-trap in Fall, the ideal home becomes a metaphor for terrifying, all-consuming beauty. The doorbell rings, a niece visits her aunt. As the door opens, we register mandatory shock – the two women are surgical freaks of the near future, their faces distorted by cosmetic protuberances punctured with pearls, their jewelry injected into their faces. As they chat about milk and sugar, horror is given suburban normalcy. Olaf’s hyper-realist vision has been critically referred to as “Jacques Tati meets David Lynch”.
Fall uses minimal digital post-production. Olaf says it signals his desire to go back to basics. Fall is out of step with the perfect imagery demanded by fashion. Fall refers to the colours of autumn, but also to a fateful sense of demise - the fall from grace, the fallen angel, the pride before the fall. It denotes a slump, a moment of enfeeblement. Together with the spindly floral arrangements, Erwin Olaf’s classical memento mori function as a sharp reminder of how quickly beauty fades.
Jonathan Turner, Rome
