Tales from The Hanging Tree 1 - 'Princess Laetitia And Palace Intrigue'
Alice's 'Bared Teeth' portrait by Alexander Lobanov (#1) is from her second MPL photoshoot, 'Basic Instinct', published the day after her nineteenth birthday on 14 May 2007. This plausibly accidental but wonderfully expressive portrait has inspired manipulations by
thehangingtree and Vladimir Zapoved, as well as myself. Tree's interpretations are the most recent, and they appear in his story,
Princess Laetitia And Palace Intrigue
Tree's manipulation (#2) illustrates Laetitia's last gesture of defiance before being hanged a second time, at the point when she hurls her last angry words at the character of Barbara Moore, who is witnessing the hanging. This manipulation employs the MPL image as a direct source.
The Tree picture illustrating Laetitia's first hanging (#4) uses the MPL portrait again, this time in a re-manipulation of the Zapoved picture entitled, 'Ook' (#3.) As noted in a previous post, this picture does not employ Alice's body. Tree's interpretation presents a convincing execution scene by pinioning the arms behind her back, taking her out of Zapoved's ruined building and placing her on an outdoor scaffold. The gallows rises ominously behind and above her.
Tree has lightened the upper surface of the breasts for this outdoor, daylight version, and tidied up some of Zapoved's minor cutting and pasting defects. Whereas Zapoved's dark environment evokes a sense of tragedy, Tree succeeds in producing a spectacle of visual irony - the contorted face and stretched body are suffering a painful death on a beautiful summer day with idyllic parkland and a blue sky filling the background.
Having experienced her fatal consecutive double hanging as Princess Laetitia, Alice reappears in an illustration later in the same story. This time Tree has employed her to represent the character of Barbara Moore, illustrating the moment when Barb is stripped naked pending an accusation of subversive activity (#6):-
I watch in disbelief as the minimal dress falls from my body. I cover my breasts and shriek “Are you crazy? What are you doing?”
I must confess to being rather excited on first seeing Tree's picture with the red curtain background. I have seen literally hundreds of pictures of Alice, but amongst them all, I had never seen this one! Tree kindly provided me with his source image (#5) which shows the distinctive turquoise navel jewel and shaved genital region, which identify her conclusively as Alice.
Additionally, the physical proportions, hairstyle, facial features and the creased frown of her brow are all consistent with the figure of Alice we know from the Cruxdreams shoot. Since the pale cream background appears authentic, this indicates an original photograph rather than a composite image.
As a photograph of Alice, it is probably unique in presenting such discomfort in a defensive pose. It is the only one I know in which she is covering her breasts with her arms. Perhaps it is a backstage picture in which she is feeling cold prior to a studio 'wet shoot'? If anybody can identify the picture or a series to which it belongs, I would be most grateful.