A ripped mesh sheath unveils a dry, desolate landscape. Light pours in beyond the horizon and our focus shifts, through the two contrasting frames, towards the cloud that dominates the sky. There’s a sense of silence as we look out on to a wide, open desert; an unknowingness about what lies beyond the ripped curtain, and what is next to come. Liberation, with the cloud’s elegant shape evoking a dove flying into the distance. But most of all, there’s an absence, as if there was something of significance that once filled this void.
Portrait of Space is by Lee Miller, the American-born photographer at the forefront of the surrealist movement in the 1920s and 30s. She went on to be instrumental in documenting the efforts made by women during the second world war, and photographed the atrocities of the Holocaust. This image, taken in Egypt in 1937, is from a time that saw her poised between two stages. Her life in thriving avant-garde Paris was behind her, and before her lay adventures in England, where she took pictures of the war for British Vogue. Her time in Egypt, for Miller, was a one of loneliness, when she found living with an expatriate community stifling. The image therefore could be read as an expression of isolation or yearning to escape.
In Portrait of Space, we are unsure what we are looking at. In a way, it’s a portrait of nothingness – a sparse, rocky plateau that gives no evidence of where we are geographically or in terms of history. However, at its centre is a rip, signifying that something has been broken and that nothing will ever be the same. The mesh sheath material, billowing in the wind, feels evocative of the transient and ephemeral nature of life.
Evoking a threshold between interior and exterior, the veil of life and death, or the surrealist preoccupation with the unconscious and conscious mind, the image could be read as symbolising the end of an era or being on the brink of something new. It is in such a period of transition that we find ourselves now, between mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the celebratory coronation of King Charles III. It’s one of the most significant societal changes that many of us will witness in our lifetimes.
It is difficult to know what artwork to use to signify this new era and the passing of Queen Elizabeth II – a woman who held so much power and lived a life with a remarkable, self-sacrificial sense of duty, born into a generation that seems alien compared to the one we find ourselves in now, and whose image is ingrained in our lives, on our coins, stamps, postboxes, banknotes. Through wars, pandemics, revolutions, and streams of new leaders, she has been an almost invincible figure. So what happens when she’s no longer there?
The era of King Charles III is full of unknowns. He will be crowned into a world vastly different to the one his mother assumed power in, so much older than she was. Society is in a vastly different place than it was in 1952 and progressions must be made and changes put in place. In these 10 days of mourning we are on the threshold between the old and new guard.
Images hold great power. At times of mourning and loss, they can provide solace, be places we go to for reflection, help us make sense of a time, and show us something about the world – no matter the era in which they were produced. It is this that we find in Portrait of Space: a simple image of a rip – evocative of a chasm in our culture – and a desolate landscape that will need to be reborn. A tear in the fabric of society that we have known for our entire lives.
