August 6, 2008

The Bride Unwrapped


Given an on-screen career barely twelve minutes long, in a film made some 75 years ago, The Bride of Frankenstein’s impact elevated her spectacular profile to the pantheon of unforgettable characters in popular culture.

She thundered to life even as the film careened to its cataclysmic finale. Elsa Lanchester’s brief cinematic ballet, silent save for one searing hiss, effectively signaled the feverish, inexorable end to James Whale’s magical and macabre fairy tale.

I submit that The Bride’s ephemeral quality is the key to our enduring fascination. She was never raised again out of the underground pools, the sulfur pits or the glaciers where her erstwhile beau nestled between films. She was never made ordinary through repeated reanimation and overexposure in progressively cheaper sequels. The Bride never danced with The Wolfman, or Abbott and Costello.

She has been merchandized, of course. The Bride was embossed on lunch boxes, printed up on puzzles and posters, made into crepe hair Halloween costumes and plastic assembly kits. She has been reproduced in oils and sculpture, pasted on skateboards and engraved as tattoos, but for all the pop imagery, the original survives, dignity intact.

Now, Ukrainian photographer Aleksey Galushkov pays homage to the Queen of Monsters in a stunning series of photographs. Galushkov’s RetroAtelier portraits mimic bygone styles, his time-traveling models — Belle Époque Belles and Forties Femme Fatales — are captured in faux hand-tinted daguerreotypes, stark Man Ray black and whites, and silvery glamour studio photography. Costumes and coiffures are impeccably dead-on, and setups evoke Caligaresque Weimar Berlin, Ziegfield Follies pinups and Hollywood's Golden Age.

Galushkov’s Bride — in the artist’s own words, a “fantasy” photoshoot — calls us across time, the prints scratched and fading. Beautiful, delicate, and perhaps a tad unchaste, this Bride is armed and dangerous. The model is identified simply as Ksenia.

See Galushkov’s remarkable Bride photoshoot on his blog, and visit the RetroAtelier site, overflowing with terrific photos.


Related:
The Bride's Bare Essentials.


Thanks for the tip to Fred of Sweet Skulls.


9 comments:

Kitty LeClaw said...

You're the Devil. It's altogether too early in the day for this elevated level of... excitement.

Frederick said...

Hey, cool, you liked the link enough to do a post on it! Double-cool, you gave me a "thinks for the tip" link!

I am sooo famous now. I might even have justified my existence.

mordicai said...

Wow, really amazing. Nice blog over-all, too! Rolled!

rob! said...

i feel conflicted.

Pierre Fournier said...

Kitty: Nonsense! It's never too early for excitement.

Rob: Conflicted? How so?

rob! said...

well, the woman is very sexy and alluring, yet she's the Bride of Frankenstein, a beloved character from my youth who is made from dead people. :)

but the photos are superb, although i didn't care too much for BOF being described as a "trash movie" on the original site!

i'd love to see this guy try his hand at Rita Zohann from the Mummy.

Mr. Karswell said...

Fantastic!

Anonymous said...

FREAKENSTEIN
www.mediatalo.net/Freakenstein

Anonymous said...

Beautiful pictures.
Darling will you marry me?