Juxtaposition 1

Title: Before Snow White

Exercise: Take any book you like and make a suitable cover illustration using two or three relevant elements…you need a picture that has not been seen hundreds of times before, but is not so oblique or unrecognisable that a viewer could not make the necessary associations.

Approach: I actually had this shot in mind when I was working on the exercise ‘evidence of action.’ I had the rose in a vase and it made me think of a final use for the fake blood I had made for the other shots. I then had a conversation with a friend about other photographers who had made work based on fairytales. I did a bit of research and apparently at the beginning of the Brothers Grimm fairytale Snow White’s mother pricks her finger on a rose and she wishes for a daughter with skin as white as snow, lips red as blood and hair black as ebony. Shortly after giving birth to Snow White she dies.