Deep in the Mexican rainforest lies the wild garden estate of Las Pozas. Here you can find waterfalls and ponds, towering concrete columns and stone snakes; dramatic gates swing open and spiral staircases end in mid-air. In 2013, this tropical wonderland formed the backdrop for a series of exquisite narrative photographs, ‘Stranger than Paradise’, shot by Tim Walker and starring British actress Tilda Swinton.
Recognised by many as one of the world’s leading fashion photographers, Walker’s work has featured frequently in Vogue, Love and W Magazine, where this series was published. Through photography – in which strange sets, props and costumes collide – Walker tells fantastical fairy tales and surreal stories. Bent mirrors, blue elephants and trees of dangling dresses all belong to his enchanted universe.
However, Walker’s extraordinary world relies, above all, on his models; and one of his most photographed subjects is Swinton. He has acknowledged that his attraction to Swinton is, in part, due to her ‘androgynous beauty’, and the London-born actress is well-known for the ambiguous male–female identity formed throughout her career on screen. A shape-shifting chameleon, Swinton has transformed herself from commune leader Sal in The Beach to Ancient One in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a gender-bending nobleman in Sally Potter’s Orlando.
Swinton is also known for possessing an otherworldly, ethereal aura, harnessed by Walker for the ‘Stranger than Paradise’ shoot in which she appears as a myriad of mythical characters. Framed by the deep green rainforest behind, she ascends a staircase in a long, flowing gown; with blue-gloved hands she covers her face with a golden mask; she poses with black-and-white centipedes crawling on her face.
Who are these characters, cast against the fantastical stage of Las Pozas? What story are Swinton and Walker telling? Also, what motivated them to work together, as artist and muse? To understand this series of photographs, and the pair’s relationship, we need to look further than Swinton’s unconventional looks and consider the ways in which she has deliberately avoided Hollywood typecasting and a traditional route to stardom.
Swinton began her acting career in art-house films, making her screen debut in Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio, a fictionalised re-telling of the life of the baroque painter. She went on to make another six films with Jarman, who became one of her best friends, and has also worked on repeat collaborations with a number of individual directors, including James Robert Jarmusch and Luca Guadagnino, moving seamlessly between experimental indie films and blockbusters. Swinton has also collaborated with fashion designers and visual artists. Most notably, she worked with Cornelia Parker to create The Maybe – a performance art piece in which, for seven consecutive days, she slept inside a glass box at London’s Serpentine Gallery. Thirteen years later, the pair revived the work at New York’s MoMA, presenting Swinton as both a living artwork and an artist – the actress having also originally conceived the idea behind the installation piece. Of the utmost importance to Swinton is developing a meaningful connection and trust with her artistic collaborators, who share in a vision: ‘Usually, with me, the project is always the second thing. The film-maker comes first. Films grow out of the relationship.’ As she has further explained: ‘The collaboration feels clear always, it’s sort of my drug, I’m in it for the conversation. The conversation’s the most important part of it.’
Walker’s approach to making art echoes that of Swinton – ‘conversation’ is a word which he also uses to explain his methods of working with models. Recognising that portraiture is a two-way process between an artist and their muse, he enters into what he calls a ‘total collaboration’, inviting the input of his subjects, many of whom he will engage in an ongoing partnership. Walker recognises that it’s an active, enduring relationship which differentiates and elevates a muse from his other models: ‘A lot of people are models, and I haven’t ever made a great picture with a model. But I have made meaningful work with a muse. Models pose for you. But a muse is someone I can talk to and give a cupboard full of references and explain what I’m trying to do. They take this away and they own what I’m saying.’
Walker’s most significant subjects are like silent-movie actors; he not only recognises but also requests their creative hand in defining the final image. Against the backdrop of outlandish sets and extravagant installations, Walker’s muses are offered the opportunity to assume a dominant role in the telling of the photographer’s story, and none more than Swinton.
‘Stranger than Paradise’ was shot in the ready-made set of Las Pozas, which translates as The Pools. This magnificent estate was built by Edward James, a hugely wealthy British collector of surrealist art during the twentieth century. James championed and funded a number of surrealist artists, including Salvador Dalí and Rene Magritte, acting as their close friend, collector and confidant alongside being a generous patron.
Following the Second World War, James moved to Xilitla in Mexico. During the 1940s, he purchased a hundred acres of rainforest and set about filling it with strange concrete sculptures and structures that complemented the natural waterfalls and ponds on site. The collector-turned-creator transformed the rainforest gardens into an immersive, surrealist playground, where he subsequently invited artists to stay. One of the surrealist artists who made frequent visits to Las Pozas was Leonora Carrington. The British-born Mexican artist and novelist had also moved to her native country in the 1940s. She thanked James for his hospitality and ongoing patronage by painting murals and creating reliefs on the estate’s architecture. These designs echo her distinctive paintings of mythical beasts, fairy-tale characters and strange costumed figures, which populate dream-like landscapes.
In ‘Stranger than Paradise’ Swinton brings to life Carrington’s surrealist characters against the otherworldly location of Las Pozas and the artist’s reliefs. Walker explains that ‘it was Tilda’s idea to look at the female surrealists – Leonora Carrington, as well as Remedios Varo and Leonor Fini. We ran riot with the imagination of the female painters. It was a love letter back to them.’
It’s no surprise that Swinton took inspiration from Carrington and the wider group of female surrealists. These women turned to themselves as their own muses – painting, photographing, drawing and sculpting surreal self-portraits; depicting themselves as creative magicians, witches and mythical genderless beings, they explored identity and sexuality beyond stereotypes, and affirmed their own creativity. Swinton had also turned to surrealist imagery before, most notably in her role as Orlando in Sally Potter’s film, adapted from Virginia Woolf’s novel of the same name. About halfway through the plot, Orlando – born a man – emerges from his deep sleep as a woman. In an interview, Swinton reflected that the vision for her portrayal came from non-conforming artist Claude Cahun who presented herself as gender neutral in photographic self-portraits: ‘Cahun looked at the limitlessness of an androgynous gesture, which I’ve always been interested in.’
Across the female surrealists’ practice, costume in particular is seen as an outward expression of a complex inner identity. Much like Cahun, who dressed in men’s suits and shaved her hair, Carrington painted herself in androgynous terms. In many paintings she is seen wrapped in floor-length cloaks and wide gowns; in an iconic self-portrait she wears tight white jodhpurs with her knees spread apart, while her long hair stands upright. Carrington is forever playing with polarised gender ideals.
In Walker’s photographs, Swinton awakens Carrington’s cast of androgynous, self-referential characters. Her ghostly pale skin is suited perfectly to this performance, as she metamorphoses through elaborate costumes and light illuminating make-up. In one image, Swinton wears a large black headdress and long billowing robes; in another she is painted all over a bright, brilliant white, her hair standing on end like that of a troll.
Walker has also explained that ‘Tilda was channelling Edward James’ himself in this series. A particularly striking photo shows her impersonating the surrealist patron – she stands in a tailored black-and-white suit and dyed dark brown hair is slicked back from her forehead. With white-gloved hands, she holds up two magnifying sheets of glass in front of her face, enlarging one eye and her smiling mouth, evoking surrealism’s emphasis on optical illusions.
In stark contrast, another photograph shows Swinton dressed in an ultra-feminine baby blue Francesco Scognamiglio ruffle top, her hair turned the shade of apricot. Again sporting white-gloved hands, she holds pink roses against a pale sky, and two more duplicate model hands descend into the frame. This image is a recreation of Magritte’s painted portrait of Edward James, Dream of Edward James, in which the artist had focused on the collector’s hands intertwined with roses in a surreal dreamscape, paying tribute to the part he played in supporting the movement.
While Swinton’s costumes and appearance change dramatically in each of the photographs, one constant is her hands. Covered in coloured gloves, they demand attention and point to her theatricality. Expressively and intentionally held – outstretched, at unusual angles – Swinton’s hands seem to gesture towards unspoken truths from the subconscious. They also show that she is, quite clearly, a performer.
Swinton brings her talent as an actress to the shoot: each image simultaneously evokes a still from a film in which she is the star, a piece of performance art and a painting come to life. Walker has also commented that it is Swinton’s ‘timing’ which stands her apart from other subjects he has worked with: ‘With Tilda, I’ll point to a space and she knows intuitively what to do – that’s what defines a muse. She feels it and lands in the right place. If I told her where to be and what to do that’s just modelling, but a muse is answering you, challenging you back and that’s way more exciting. And what she does extremely well is timing.’
Although Swinton is acting out Carrington’s surrealist characters, Walker – proving his skill as a photographer – also manages to capture something of his muse beneath the layers of costume. As she looks directly down the lens, the actress radiates her essence and truth among the fantasy; within the surrealist matrix, these are portraits of Swinton as Swinton, too.
As a photographer, Walker gives his sitters agency to display their real selves, explaining his desire to frame them ‘as they are – that’s what you’re trying to document’, adding that there should be just as much ‘pleasure for them’ as there is for him in this process ‘because it’s life affirming to be seen’. Just as she develops a close relationship with film-makers, the actress has built trust with Walker, allowing both him and his camera in.
In contrast to painting a portrait, which could take many months, photography allows Walker to capture Swinton, as herself, in an instant: ‘The camera, the photograph is very immediate – that moment when it is right to take the picture, you can feel it, when the subject is at their most beautiful and articulate.’ Framing and finding beauty is a motivating force for Walker, who has reflected on this quest: ‘There’s something about certain people I get involved with, deeply, gargantuanly beautiful – and this is why you keep going back again and again, because you haven’t honoured all of your senses of being around that person. There’s a chasing-rainbow quality, you can see a pot of gold in a person, teasing you, constantly.’ Like many artists, Walker is driven to distil the very essence and beauty of his muses in an image, a job that is never quite complete and explains his reason for working with Swinton repeatedly.
One year after the ‘Stranger than Paradise’ shoot, Walker made and directed a short film, The Muse (2014), which explores the notion of an artist at the mercy of their muse. Edward Dunstan (played by Ben Whishaw) is a photographer and film-maker beholden to his mermaid-muse. But as legend has it, if a human man falls in love with a mermaid, she will grow legs that will, if she so desires, carry her far away from the man she cast her watery spell upon. Walker tells the story of an obsessive artist who, abandoned by his muse, plays photographs and film of her on a running loop. It’s a reflection on the power dynamic between artist and muse, and one which he has experienced personally: ‘It’s fire, an energy that won’t ever end, that drives the muse and the artist, the portrayer of the muse.’ Walker counts Whishaw as another muse, among a number of men including James Crewe, James Spencer and Grayson Perry. As he has said, ‘Male muses are every bit as inspiring as women. The muse is not just in the remit of female for me. But there is a femininity about these men. And a lot of female muses, like Tilda Swinton and Karen Elson, have elements of the masculine. I’m interested in the parameter of beauty – and you see this most clearly in Swinton.’
Throughout her career, Swinton has often subverted expectations of gender, taking to the parameters of beauty and using surrealist artists as her inspiration. Nowhere is that more evident than in the shoot at Las Pozas; channelling Carrington’s costumed characters, as well as Edward James, she shows that self-representation is limitless.
‘Stranger than Paradise’ unfolds as a shared lucid dream between Walker and Swinton. Both have agency, united in their surrealist endeavour to tell a story which draws on art history to blur boundaries between male and female, past and present, fact and fiction. Like all the best stories, it enters an autobiographical space too; and as Swinton evokes and exposes her androgynous self, Walker meets her with his camera, holding it up as a magic mirror to frame his captivating muse.