Steven Klein, one of five photographers in the National Portrait Gallery’s forthcoming Face of Fashion show has chosen Kevin Federline as a subject.
Excerpt from TimesOnline:
"Klein doesn’t tell celebrities what to do or what he wants. He never tells them to take their clothes off or look a certain way, A celebrity will approach him, tell him that they click with his vision, and they dream up a concept together, a performance. That’s quite something: the world of truly stellar celebrity is patrolled by sharky agents who want their clients to look good. But Klein’s edginess is perhaps acceptable. It hints at a dark side to the celebs, but with such overt theatricality that the brand won’t be genuinely endangered.
However, Klein likes to “deconstruct” not only what we expect from the particular subject but also the notion of what a portrait is. He says the National Portrait Gallery initially balked from exhibiting arguably his most shocking picture — Kevin Federline, Britney’s ex, with his throat slashed — but “to me, a portrait is a representation of a person and a slash across a throat is the equivalent of a brushstroke”.
It wasn’t a big deal for Federline to appear like this, says Klein nonchalantly. “It’s like a classical painting. The slash, the make-up, is a mask that reveals who the person is. For me, the break in the skin shows that all portraits are lies. To see through the skin is to see someone’s reality.” The violence of the picture is made more intriguing when you consider what happened to Federline next: dumped by Spears and fast-tracked to public enemy number one."
It's a little too 'out there' conceptually for my liking. How'd you like to hang that one in your living room?
Spicy
Source: TimesOnline
