http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l5/louise_030/scan0010dianaalone.jpg
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l5/louise_030/scan0011dianaspringboard.jpg
I know, I am sorry, this is about Princess Diana, but I couldn't help making a "compare/contrast" kind of comment with the picture of Princess Caroline.
Besides, as grateful as I am for everybody who has responded, I am feeling a bit self-conscious about this thread, as if I am the only one who is interested in commenting on pictures. I don't want to be talking to myself ! I have other pictures of Caroline in store but dare not post them until someone else picks up the ball... Please somebody, post a picture and give your reaction ?
Anyway, moderators, if it doesn't belong here, move it (or erase it), although I think (self-servingly, obviously) that this thread has merit and could apply to any of the royals.
These pictures of Princess Diana have always held a special poignancy for me, partly because they were taken one week before her death. They are paparazzi pictures, so they are not in the same category as the one of Caroline above, but there are similar traits: the presence of the sea, for one. Here, though, the sea is immense, whereas in the Helmut Newton picture, it is more suggested than overwhelming. Here, it is so immense as to almost dwarf her, as if it could easily engulf her. She does not dominate her environment, her environment has a timeless quality which bespeaks both of peace and being suprahuman. And speaking of accessories, as I did in the previous post, the only prop here is the seagull. The overall impression is one of immense loneliness, with no human presence to give a sense of companionship. She seems lost in time and space, perched at the edge of her life, perched on the verge of an uncertain future and a melancholy past. She is already no longer human in the sense we sometimes give the word, associated with sociability, with associating with our fellow human beings, but instead, she is already a tragic heroine, or a heroine (usually a hero really) alone with the elements, usually water (Moby Dick and Poe novels come to mind), she is a part of the elements, by which I mean the greater nature: the immense sky, the immense sea.
It is too easy, knowing what was to happen a week later, to read all kinds of symbolic clues: Diana not looking forward but backward (at what or whom?), her face as if shrouded in darkness in this clear, almost cloudless bright summer day: only her blond hair, the top of her thighs and her left shoulder catch the light. It is clear that this woman is not "n'importe qui", not just anyone: even if we did not know it was Princess Diana, there is an aura about her: she is too gorgeous, too perfect. The pose, although listless, bespeaks power, as the strongly athletic woman always projected. The curve of her back is exquisite. But the repose does not speak of potential or actual energy, of someone getting ready to replenish her energy, there is a hint of depression in the hunched shoulders and the dowcast gaze.
This is not a black and white picture, and her one piece very simple bathing suit invests her with color, but it is a strange blend of the color of the sea, of the sky, making her even more one with the environment, outside of our world.
If an artist photographer had wanted to pose that picture, I bet he would have wanted to include the seagull, such a symbolic feature of life, but life of both the sea and the sky, flying toward her as if to come and get her.
Diana here has a purity (of form, of artlessness, although it is said that she knew she was being photographed and posed accordingly) that sums up one of the essences of who she was :so much above the fray of the average humanity, yet so vulnerable. Exquisitely feminine, seductive, but for whom ? To what purpose ? Any attempt at manipulation (of which she was so often accused of) seems irrelevant here, because there is no one to see her. Sure, there are us, but more so than in the picture with Princess Caroline, we are invisible, because she appears already to be beyond our world. This is not a creation, a construction or reconstruction, it is like the naked truth.
I hope my musings do not offend anyone. Again, I wish you would use this thread to let your imagination go as you look at pictures. I love reading how we see pictures !