Sympathy for the Devil - The Marie Antoinette Series
“The Marie Antoinette” series of photographic portraits, which are based upon historical research, reveal a rare glimpse into the life of a very tragic, powerful, and often-demonized public figure. This demonization was due in no small part to the sexually explicit caricatures and propaganda distributed throughout Paris and meant to cripple the 18th century French monarchy by providing the public with a scapegoat for their discontent by depicting her as a fashionable, frivolous, sexually corrupt Austrian predator. These self-portraits are intended as antithesis to the public criticism and propaganda that plagued Marie Antoinette through vivid tableaus created to capture her lesser known virtues, personal sufferings and cultural interests. This included the Queen’s embrace of the naturalistic ideals by the French Enlightenment thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ironically, the very ideals, which led to her execution.
The stringent etiquette of ‘civilized society’ fostered a dehumanized public persona of the Queen, and continues to do so to women around the world today. While the portraits portray the private and often painful, undisclosed moments of a powerful woman, Marie Antoinette becomes a symbol of the controversy and contradictions that can exist within the complexity both women of power and of women in general. Suffering is universal and knows no distinction of time, place, gender or class barriers.
The stringent etiquette of ‘civilized society’ fostered a dehumanized public persona of the Queen, and continues to do so to women around the world today. While the portraits portray the private and often painful, undisclosed moments of a powerful woman, Marie Antoinette becomes a symbol of the controversy and contradictions that can exist within the complexity both women of power and of women in general. Suffering is universal and knows no distinction of time, place, gender or class barriers.
