Consider the semiotics of this image, a portrait of Natalie Portman by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, married fashion photographers and portraitists. In it Portman appears to be subject to another’s will. The short, clipped nails and size of the hand forcing her expression would seem to belong to a man. Any culture familiar with the film ‘Un Chien Andalou’ by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, which one might guess Inez & Vinoodh, as they are known, to be, might recognise something of the set-up to that film’s infamous eye cutting scene in this image; lacking that familiarity, the way Portman’s expression is being enacted by another may yet seem to signify an aggressor or domination; regardless, the very fact of the hand in the making of this facial expression, the eyebrow raise, effectively nullifies our usual association with it, which is that something is being quizzed. One sign supersedes another, by oustripping its authenticity.

The way her head is covered and held, by her this time, is reminiscent, to an audience of Christian art, of the Madonna; is Portman to be revered for her saintly passivity? Any Christian reading of the image must also essay the symbolic wedding ring; if we are to work only with the image in isolation from all knowledge of its origin, shall we infer that the picture is of a married couple, or does knowing that Vinoodh is married, but to Inez not Natalie, permit us to glaze over while reading that particular bit of the image? The picture defies easy interpretation but its strange otherness, another studium, is part of its appeal for me.

Reading:

Photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin's best shot Art and design The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jul/08/my-best-shot-inez-lamsweered-vinoodh-matadin

Un Chien Andalou (1929) - IMDb
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020530/