Through the looking glass

Milan-based Kiwi Frances Melhop's magical images are featured in high-profile fashion mags and ad campaigns internationally.

Alice peering contemptuously into Wonderland through a relatively tiny doorway. Sleeping Beauty laid out in an incandescent casket amid an enchanted forest. A doll-like woman (or woman-like doll) stuffed into a disproportionally tiny dollhouse … ethereally beautiful and exquisitely dressed. The heroines of photographer and illustrator Frances Melhop’s collective oeuvre are like characters in marvellous but macabre fairytales, often held prisoner to their surrounds.

Unhappy with the way women are typically portrayed in fashion and advertising, Frances, whose work has appeared in high-profile magazines (including numerous Vogue titles) and advertising campaigns around the world, creates images which blur the real and the surreal, encouraging viewers to consider the world (and particularly women’s roles within it) in new ways. Charming looking with dark and often disturbing undertones, they tell visual tales of a world out of kilter which celebrates beauty but warns us not to be blinded by it.

Frances, who has lived in Italy’s Milan for the past decade, has always held a deep fascination for fairytales, myths, legends and other fantastic tales, convinced their more extraordinary elements are grounded in the ordinary world.

As a child growing up in New Zealand’s South Island, she would spend hours roaming the countryside, envisaging the fictional characters she read about brought to life. Even if Alice’s White Rabbit and other favourites didn’t materialise (to her eyes at least), she would feel their presence in the air around her. Magic and mystery, in her mind, lurked everywhere.
Even then, Frances says she knew she would pursue a career as an artist.

“I spent many happy hours as a child in my grandfather’s old mint green caravan painting scrap pieces of 4x2,” she recalls.

Her father, a civil engineer, presented her with her first camera when she was 12, sparking a lifelong passion for experimental photography. Keen to explore new artistic possibilities, Frances completed night courses in photography, drawing, graphic design and printmaking while still at high school. She continued to develop her technical skills while studying for a Bachelor of Arts at Christchurch’s Canterbury University; volunteering to help out on professional photo shoots.

At 20, she set out on her big OE, returning to Christchurch a year later, where she gained invaluable (if poorly-paid) experience helping out with various photographic and cinematographic projects.

Three years down the track, she sought out new inspiration and challenges in Sydney, where she enrolled in a three-year photography programme at Sydney Institute of Technology. Her big break came in the form of an assignment for Australian Vogue, which saw her travel to Tasmania for a major fashion shoot. The resultant images of a wild-haired, satin gown-clad model cavorting in a bleak, windswept landscape are dark, dramatic and almost Wuthering Heights-like. Entitled ‘Wild Rose’, the shoot cemented her reputation as a rising photographic star.

Over the next nine years, she continued to push boundaries with her work, developing a signature style she now describes as “a little bit fairytale, a little bit Victorian, always with a lurking dark side.”

By age 33, however, she was ready for another change of scene.

“I felt I had gone as far as I could in Australia and friends in Italy convinced me to move there,” she explains. “I started my new life in Milan on the very first day of the new millennium.”

Influences of the city’s rich architectural and cultural heritages are everywhere in her subsequent works. The 2007 series ‘100 Years of Sleep’, for example, features models in princess-like frocks wandering zombie-like through a beautifully restored Northern Italian castle, while the ‘Abandoned Castle’ series, shot in the same year, is an eerie tribute to the nation’s rich but half-forgotten history.

Frances cites her most difficult ever assignment as a fashion shoot for Vogue Pelle Italia involving a bad-tempered horse, a model who couldn’t ride and a giant monorail camera of the sort the very first photographers used.

“The combination of an immovable camera, wet Polaroids that had to be pinned up, dried and kept away from dust and a model who was petrified of the jumpy horse she was sitting on was tricky to say the least.”

Fortunately, her detailed planning and “sheer bloody-mindedness” to realise her vision saw her through.

“As a photographer, you must go in with a firm idea and a plan. That said, you need to be flexible enough to adapt to the unexpected. If it works, it’s a happy progression. If not, it’s back to the storyboard.”

These days, Frances’ work takes her all over the world, from the alps of Northern Italy to the deserts of Nevada to the outback of Australia. Occasionally it takes her back to New Zealand, where she likes to collaborate on projects with friends.

While it sounds like a glamorous lifestyle – and in many respects is – it does have its downsides. Frances readily admits she struggles to manage the business side of things.
“The work comes in or it doesn’t – there’s no security or holiday or sick pay. In the low times, I put my head down and learn new things. I probably should make a plan some day.”
While she mightn’t have an overarching business plan, Frances is certain she will devote the rest of her days to “making images and telling stories”, saying “my life is my work and my work is my life”.

Always interested in exploring new artistic territory, Frances has begun to experiment with animation, creating short films from her still photographs.

“Right now I’m working on a stop-motion animation for a music clip. It’s something I’ve wanted to get in to for ages and now I have a good excuse, and a deadline.”
She would also like to create more experimental images for independent exhibitions (over the past four years, her work has featured in numerous exhibitions in Italy, France and the US and she is working on a series of pinhole images for a group show in Dunedin).
Beyond that, Frances says she hopes the adventure that has been her life story so far will continue to present fantastic opportunities. And that she and her new husband, who wed recently in Australia’s Northern Territory, will be allowed to live happily ever after.

Frances’ secrets to creative success:

I have always found inspiration in books, films and music. Alice and Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and The Chronicles of Narnia are three of my all-time favourite books, while my favourite films include Pan’s Labyrinth, Blade Runner, the original Star Wars, Amélie and An Angel at My Table.

My greatest strengths and weaknesses are bloody-mindedness and over-sensitivity.

I like to control as much of the shoot as possible: from the model, location and clothes used to the overriding ‘story’. I only have creative blocks when I’m asked to shoot in a banal or lewd way that goes against my views on how women should be presented.

Some of my best friends are also my most important mentors. As well as looking out for me, they help me put my problems in perspective and have a good, therapeutic laugh at nonsense.

I ensure I devote enough time to pursuits which leave me feeling refreshed and inspired. I watch movies, swim, read, hike to places I’ve never been and drink wine with old friends. I also practice tai chi most days – it’s where I find balance.