The Seven Sides of Kate
by Marc Fischer

Published in Kultur, Der Spiegel. September 2001

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At gala events and award shows, British photographer Dafydd Jones positions himself alongside his fellow photographers-by the red carpet. In his photomontages, however, the stars appear as they would not necessarily want themselves to be seen:uncertain, confused, vunerable.
It must have been some sympathetic Holywood director or studio head, who, many years ago, told an untalented girl that many roads lead to fame.
Certainly there is some truth to this line, especially today. Anyone who can’t make it as an actress could still be a singer or a model for Versace. And if they’re not up to that, they can still reach their goal by allowing themselves to be caught frolicking on a sun lounge with Brad Pitt- as long as they’ve made sure to alert the right photographer in advance. But there is only one sure route to fame, and it’s red and mostly made of velour. It is the red carpet.

We all know the pictures, we see them everywhere. After every Oscar party, every Grammy award ceremony, every charity balls: pictures of George Cloony in a tuxedo, or of Jennifer Lopez, hand-in-hand with her latest dancer boyfriend, walking past a wall of photographers and gossip columnists, like a princess at her own coronation. The diamond earrings of the filmstars and the gold chains of the rappers reflect the flash bulbs, but the thing that proves the importance of the event and the stature of the stars, the presence of sex, glamour and money, is the blood-red colour under the sole of the patent leather shoe, loafer or stiletto: the carpet, in other words.

The photographers assigned to these stories by the newspapers and magazines of the world are given simple instructions: ‘Show up, get as close as you can and get inside Courtney Love’s cleavage, preferably falling out of her bra!’ That is how icons are made, how stars become tabloid gods, how idols are created.

For one man, however, this assignment was not enough: London society photographer Dafydd Jones, 45. For many years, Jones had been covering parties, gala events and balls in Europe and the United States for society and celebrity magazines like ‘Tatler’, ‘Vanity Fair’ and ‘Talk’. Jones had taken some great photos; high-quality snapshots of drunken Royals at Ascomt, of student pool parties at Oxford, of Kate Moss, Johnny Dept and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but at some point he began to get bored with the same old celebrities, always pictured in the same way, either with or without a champagne glass in hand. ‘There was something missing from all these pictures’, says Jones. “And what was missing, was the truth.”

Jones’s revitalisation of star photography happened almost by accident, when he took a few photos of model Amber Valetta backstage at a Paris couture show in 1998. As Valetta kept turning in all directions during her fittings, Jones almost followed her with his camera, rotating 360 degrees around her body, almost to the point of dizziness. When Jones put the photo’s next to each other in the darkroom, the “definitive Amber Valetta photo”, that picture editors are always looking for, failed to emerge. Instead he found that he had captured a sequence, a short film, which he was able to manipulate on the computer in order to create a complete picture. Four Amber Valetta’s appeared in the resulting image.

In a world of gala events and stars, a sequence can say more that a single photograph, which shows only studied poses but not the life in between. Jones has been taking pictures according to this principle ever since, and he likes to position these star sequences on the red carpet, on the “catwalk of the modern aristocracy”, as he puts it.
As a result, in the photos Jones took at the Golden Globe 2000 Awards, we see not a smiling, confident Courtney Love, as she is commonly portrayed, but rather six images of Courtney, whose facial expression and body language change with every step and who at times looks uncertain- even Courtney Love occasionally drops her pose. We see her lit up by the flash of an unknown photographer- she is so startled that she seem, for a moment, uncertain of where she should be going.

Through manipulation Jones shows us the stars- not just Courtney Love but also Kate Moss, Prince Charles and Stella McCartney- not as untouchable, invunerable icons, but rather as people who seem somewhat uncertain and small within the circus that surrounds them.

Jones portrays not just the stars but also the world around them- the world of marketing and tightly controlled schedules, of heavily armed bodyguards and handlers. Looking at these pictures you can almost hear the photographers and journalists calling out to Love for attentions: “Courtney, Courtney!” or “Over here Angelina, over here!” in the hope that Angelina Jolie might pull out a knife or something of the sort. And by editing several celebrities together we gain something of an insight into the hierachy of the stars: Winona Ryder, courted one moment, is almost pushed off the carpet when Demi Moore appears, and she in turn is ignored once Jolie enters. As Jones says: “These moments, more than any others, show us that the event is more important than any individual star.”

Given how much his red carpet series, despite its beauty, demystifies the star business, you would think that Dafydd Jones would encounter some difficulties getting accreditation for events, but so far there have been few complaints. Only Hugh Grant was once upset when photographer Jones had taken of a druken Grant at a party in Oxford surfaced in the British tabloids following the Divine Brown affair.

The fact that Jones remains inconspicuous may be due to his quite manner, and the fact that he doesn’t hassle celebrities. He is the opposite of a paparazzi- he is not interested in the privite lives of the stars but in their public faces.

Often Jones doesn’t even know who he is photographing, but specialist knowledge is not necessary: “Anyone who is walking down the red carpet and having there name screamed out is famous, whether they’re an actor, a playboy bunny or whatever.”

Sometimes, as Jones discovered, ignorance can impress: a year ago, at a party in New York, he photographed a pretty girl standing in a corner. “Excuse me please, but who are you?” Jones later asked the girl. It took a second for her to realise that the question was not a joke, but then Gwyneth Paltrow was very polite as she spelled out her name for him.