The Princess: The Female Gaze
I was commissioned to create a portrait of Princess Diana for a new film, The Princess, premiering on the 30th June 2022.
I’ve created multiple portraits of people in power around the world and have been proud to shine a light on the lack of women in leadership positions, especially in the realm of religion. I was really excited to have the opportunity to create a portrait of Diana who remains a powerful and inspiring woman across the world.
The Princess tells the ostensibly familiar story of Princess Diana’s life and tragic death, a tale that has been told countless times in books, dramatic recreations and even a musical. But this film is unique because it uses found footage captured at the time to highlight an alternative perspective on this familiar story.
In many ways it is a film about the media portal of Diana, it recontextualizes the events, challenges our preconceptions and questions how we, as the audience, consume the spectacle. I wanted to use this piece to recontextualise prevailing portrayals of Princess Diana in the same way. I wanted to create a different kind of image, from my perspective as a woman, a mother and a female artist and to consider the idea of a female gaze. How could my work depict Diana as a multidimensional woman, and as an empowered subject with agency?
Photography is often considered to be neutral or factual, yet has so often been used to fetishise, objectify and commodify its subject. It has a capacity to impact the way people see themselves and others. I wanted to interrogate both the artist and the viewer and question what we consume with our gaze. I had considered my role as a female photographer before while making In Seven Days, and in particular how President Obama was redefining masculinity in relation to power and race, which you can read about here .
Princess Diana is one of the most photographed woman in the world, but most of the images we are familiar with are official portraits or paparazzi photos captured by men. It is very rare to see images of her created from a feminine perspective. For example, there are 55 portraits of Princess Diana in the National Portrait Gallery, and only one was captured by a female artist, the photographer Carole Cutner.
I reflected on how we view princesses in our society, how they continue to perpetuate certain (white western) beauty standards, and ideals of womanhood and domesticity, and how they represent the ultimate aspiration for little girls. When Princess Diana was first thrust into the limelight she was cast as a demure and virtuous ingénue. She was portrayed as the archetypal Disney princess, and her engagement to Prince Charles was a modern fairytale. She was expected to fit into the rigid institutional expectations of the monarchy, to conform to a constructed femininity, and to perform a role of romanticised subservience. As her private life came under more and more intense scrutiny, Diana became the damsel in distress, the passive victim of a loveless marriage, and her suffering was sensationalised and highly gendered.
I decided to create a repeat image, that transitions from dark to light. This represents the idea of change or metamorphosis, and the idea that Princess Diana had many facets to her identity. She was a lady, or a princess, or a modern day secular saint, or a victim, or a manipulator, or a rebel and more. In my artwork she embodies all of these nuances and complexities, but she also emerges as a woman with agency, power and independence.Diana embodied contradictions and nuances.
Whilst Princess Diana is celebrated for her defiance and strength, she also wasn’t afraid to fail in public, and it is this fallibility and vulnerability that often made people love her even more. Diana subverted the princess trope, but also had a softness that played into it. For me it was her unusual empathy and connection to her subjects which was her greatest strength. Whatever your views, all of this means that Princess Diana is still a figure of such enduring appeal and inspiration today.
The Princess will be screened at a special event in cinemas across the UK for one night only . Click here for tickets.
Click here to purchase a limited edition silkscreen print of my artwork