Inspiration:
Natalie Portman

Inspiration, the fifth and last film in the Auerbach series, recalls a demanding 2013 commercial photoshoot for Dior with Natalie Portman.

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It was the busiest set-up in this series, with a correspondingly large team on the client’s and the model’s side. In this far from intimate and tightly managed setting, the assignment was to manifest spontaneity. Alas, the catch with inspiration is it can be practiced, but not faked.

Auerbach describes directing Portman, facilitating her work through affordances and changes in position, letting her ease into the role required of her by Dior: a perfect balance of control and incandescence, novelty and prestige. No mean feat, as Portman’s fame and beauty complicate this equilibrium: her luxury must not outshine that of the brand she’s representing.

The master photo in this series is remarkable for its overt inclusion of the elements of process. It could be revealing to a fault were the photographer less skilled or the model any less self-possessed or enigmatic.

As it stands, the master is almost a film. In a single saccade, it migrates from the darkened studio to the daylit window, from the workshop to the composition. Portman tilts balletically into the fenestration, casting an expert glance over her shoulder as she, knowingly, introduces a diagonal into the mise en scène that’s further heightened by the volume and cut of her skirt.

Portman is not an ingenue; she never has been. She is the opposite of one, in fact—a cosmopolitan—and Auerbach frames this in a commercial portrait that is also ravishingly psychological.

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Posts in this series

Announcing Captured Moment: The Master’s Process

Announcing Captured Moment: The Master’s Process

Accursed Share is proud to present Captured Moment: The Master’s Process, the first NFT collection by photographer-to-the-stars Frederic Auerbach.

The first film in the series, Authenticity, features triple-threat Zendaya almost a decade prior to her atmospheric and career-defining turn in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune (2021).

Authenticity: Zendaya

Authenticity: Zendaya

The first film in the series, Authenticity, features triple-threat Zendaya almost a decade prior to her atmospheric turn in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune (2021).

The authenticity in the Zendaya series is not only found in the subject, with her signature admixture of freshness and sophistication. It is coded in the silent and complicit rapport between her and the photographer, and so it is also the object, and objective, of the pictures.

Adaptation: Benedict Cumberbatch

Adaptation: Benedict Cumberbatch

The second film in the Auerbach series is Adaptation, centered around one of the most prominent male stars of the 2000s, Benedict Cumberbatch.

These photos were taken for GQ UK in 2014, when Cumberbatch was in the heat of his fame, coming off Season 3 of the acclaimed BBC adaptation of Sherlock. He was in Boston, filming Scott Cooper’s Black Mass—the Whitey Bulger crime drama with Johnny Depp—so expectations were great, time was of the essence, and timing—as ever—eternal.

Efficiency: Mike Tyson

Efficiency: Mike Tyson

The third film in the Auerbach series is Efficiency, the only video in the series dedicated to an athlete, not an actor. The sports’ star in question is none other than Mike Tyson, whom Auerbach photographed in 2020 for Haute Living, a luxury bimonthly publication.

Two great modern masculine archetypes of force and flow—the boxer and the jazzman—take pride of place in the American imaginary. Among the former, Tyson remains an undisputed titan: a heavyweight of heavyweights, with a life suitably bedecked in triumph, sacrifice and controversy. As with jazz, the Empyrean of boxing admits no easy heroes—nor does it want them. These are men the way gods dreamt them; men with terribilità.

Timelessness: Sharon Stone

Timelessness: Sharon Stone

Timelessness, the fourth film in the Auerbach series, is a meditation on the bewitchment of timespace by Sharon Stone.

One should not think of Stone as just a sex symbol: every generation has its slew of vamps, most of which leave no dent in memory. Most of the smokeshows will age into air, but the femme fatale lingers.

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