The Unbreakable Trilogy. Primula Bond

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СКАЧАТЬ sure you’ll agree that this young woman, not twenty-one yet, doesn’t hold back. I hope the way we’ve laid out the exhibition has led you on, that you’ve all been taken in by the apparent innocence of some of her work, particularly the Venetian convent pictures. She took these illicitly and they are breathtaking in their voyeuristic content.’

      The murmuring hushes slightly. Several people push out of the crowd to look at the pictures he’s pointing at, which they haven’t seen before. I prickle with pride when I see the women raise their hands to their flushing cheeks when they see the content. The men shift their legs apart like cowboys, shove their hands in their pockets.

       Is that a gun, or are you just turned on by my pictures?

      ‘Perhaps instead of Halloween we should have called it Flagellation.’

      Everyone is staring back at Gustav now. Those who aren’t ogling my Venetian series. He really holds an audience, like one of those sham preachers who brainwash their congregation with sheer charisma. ‘Anyway, I give you Serena Folkes. The girl with a great future.’

      Gustav raises his glass to me, a strange new tenderness burning in his eyes. I raise my glass in return and smile, watch and wait for the answering smile, and there it is, transforming his face to stern beauty, and filling me with hot pride. I won’t let him down. These influential people, celebrities, well known faces from the arts and fashion pages, even some academics and, best of all, two famous society photographers, have all come at his bidding because they trust his judgement. And now they’re here to judge me.

      I feel my wrist tugging slightly as he unchains it and moves away but I remain where I am by the window. I catch faint noises across the city. Something flapping on the roof of a building opposite. Leathery wings taking flight, the blood-curdling shriek of an animal hunted down, its neck snapped with one tidy bite. Probably foxes, vermin slinking about among London’s rubbish bins, killing mice. Do foxes lurk near the river?

      The flapping sound is a jubilant Union Jack left over from the Olympic summer, flying above the National Theatre. I’m so keyed up I swear I can hear applause from the audience.

      And in here, the low heartbeat of drum, double bass and breathy sax from the speakers.

      Venice is like that silver chain, tugging me back to its watery secrets. I remember that night so well. Wandering through that maze of calles, so thoroughly lost, catching sight of this young nun scurrying out of nowhere. I dashed forward to ask her for directions but she was in such a rush that it turned into a mad chase. Eventually I followed her through a little gate in a long crumbling wall and when she vanished up a big stone flight of stairs I realised I was locked in for the night.

      I tiptoed around the silent convent clumsily disguised in an oversized grey habit, but I couldn’t get out, and then I found her again, her and her sisters, all preparing for sleep in their tiny, doorless cells. At first they were praying and then they took out these little whips and started hitting themselves on their bare skin, and that’s what’s on display now. My camera caught the technique my little nun used, a quick flick of the wrist to bring the tails down on her flesh. The sharp tipping of her head after each blow, the licking of her lips, the slow belly dance of secret pleasure.

      ‘Say something,’ murmurs Crystal. ‘They’re all looking at you, see? They expect you to talk them through it.’

      ‘Gustav didn’t warn me about this!’ I hiss back, starting to sweat even in my flimsy dress. ‘I’m hopeless at public speaking.’

      Crystal hands me another full glass and starts to move through the crowd, who are starting to shift slightly. ‘Who else is going to explain these very naughty pictures?’

      ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.’ My voice is high and girlish, but when I look across their heads to find Gustav, I clear my throat and start again. ‘Perhaps in fact we should have called this entire exhibition Voyeurism.’

      I pause there, and the effect is fantastic. Everyone laughs warmly, glasses lifted to cover laughing mouths, but they are all focused on me now.

      ‘Because that’s essentially what photography is. Voyeurism. Watching. In fact that’s what Gustav Levi called me when he caught me photographing these little witches on Halloween night. A voyeur. And I don’t think he meant it in a good way.’

      There’s warmer laughter, glasses waved jovially at Gustav, who raises his glass in return but keeps his eyes on mine. Is he expecting me to slip up?

      ‘But I hope this exhibition shows my type of voyeurism in a positive rather than salacious way. Or at least constructive, artistic. Even arousing. If that’s not looking for excuses.’ I walk slowly along the wall towards the Venetian series to the accompaniment of more friendly laughter.

      One guest holding a mini tape recorder puts his hand up. ‘I don’t know if you’re taking Q and As?’

      ‘Of course.’ Wow. Where did this smooth professionalism come from? ‘I want everyone to understand my work.’

      ‘So I’m interested in your influences. They’re obviously very varied.’ The journalist taps his pen against his mouth. ‘But I know everyone’s dying for you to talk us in particular through these convent ones. These Venetian nuns in their cells?’

      ‘Ah, yes. To be honest I was stunned myself when I walked into the gallery this morning.’ I arrive at the series, firstly of the arched cloisters, then the chapel, then the stone staircase flanked by statues of female saints which led up to the nuns’ sleeping quarters. The arch of the corridor, the punctuation of the little doorless cells. The ghostly figure, slightly out of focus, appearing in the first doorway. ‘I mean, when I saw just how erotic the effect is now that they’re blown up to life size.’

      The journalist nods. ‘That scenario, well, it’s the stuff of pure fantasy, isn’t it? Did you realise you were appealing to a male audience when you took these?’

      ‘Male, female. I want to appeal to all audiences, obviously. Especially the one here tonight.’

      I wave my arm around the assembled throng and again they laugh kindly. One or two cast suspicious glances at the journalist and I wonder if he’s trying to wrongfoot me for some reason. Gustav has his head down and is writing something on a pad of paper.

      I plough on. ‘I studied the work of Helmut Newton, and I think you can see his sado-masochistic mannerisms expressed here, however subconsciously.’ I flatten my hand on my leg and stroke it absently. ‘These women are alone with their masochism. Their impure fantasies. But it’s also a penance. They’re obeying orders.’

      ‘Would you say,’ interrupts another woman, ‘that such depictions are bordering on the pornographic, no matter how tastefully shot?’

      ‘That depends on whether you think something occurring naturally in life counts as porn. I’d say it’s a heightened and corrupted version of reality.’

      ‘Even so. Those little whips they seem to be using, the flagellation,’ coughs the woman, taking a noisy sip from her glass. ‘How did you get such intimate pictures of such secluded, holy women?’

      ‘If you’ve visited Venice you’ll know that the nature of the place makes every nook and cranny there seem hidden and secretive, but I only stumbled on that convent by mistake when I got lost one evening. I followed this nun who seemed to be in a hurry, I wanted to ask her the way, but she disappeared СКАЧАТЬ