Between blades of grass we lie watching, waiting on the ground in the middle of a clearing; the smoky mist creeps towards us as we peer over a woman’s legs like an animal inspecting its prey. The woman lies listlessly, her body cropped out of the picture. She is anonymous, identified only by the straps of her red leather shoes, her pale skin and the petrol blue of her silk skirt that has been hitched up over her knees. Thrust against the picture plane, our relationship with this unidentified body is intimate: she is the object of our gaze, and perhaps the victim too. Are we lying with her? Or do we crouch over her? The image is pervaded by a sense of mystery almost like a still from a film noir. With whispers of violence and murder, we immediately get a sense of narrative, underpinned by an eroticism emphasised by the fetishistic focus on her red shoes.
This photograph is taken from the Prada Autumn/Winter 1997 campaign and is the front cover of the newly published Steidldangin catalogue of Glen Luchford’s work. Luchford uses the camera here as a peeping device, almost cinematic in his approach whereby the viewer is dramatically involved in the narrative of his work. Blown up, the image’s murkiness seems to permeate our own space, pulling us into the photograph. The thick white band across the top of the cover, emblazoned with the artist’s name in bold black letters, stamps the image with a tag of reality. This is an image of an image: an enticement not for the viewer but the buyer, calling to be picked up, purchased and placed upon a coffee table. Ultimately its promise of mystery and drama makes it the perfect picture to represent this seminal collection of Luchford’s images, a tantalising tease of what lies behind the cover.
