“Lunaire”
A photographic series and collaboration between muse, writer, makeup artist, model and stylist Josey Heyes and photographer Lotte Thor.
-
Accompanying text by Josey:
The word clown evokes many things.
It possesses an enormous versatility in its meaning, both objectively and subjectively. It can be a simple fact. It can be an insult. It can be many different descriptions of a certain types of people depending on the personal association of the person using said word.
But every one of these meanings has at its heart the same solid principle:
A Fool.
Pierrot is the clown that has risen the most as a star with recent generations.
Pierrot, with the white face and endearing black eyes, with the unmistakable oversized blouse with pompous black buttons. Often accompanied by a large black tear, Pierrot is the epitome of the Sad Clown.
Many artists, creatives, and pretty much anybody, can find solace in this tragicomic stock character: the perpetual loser, the lonely heart, the melancholic dreamer, the naive sufferer.
I find that we are drawn to this sad symbol because as our generations have become more developed and connected, we have also become more isolated. Our true feelings are often hidden - masked- or turned into to comic relief.
We feel the safest when we are alone, and it is then when we must face the incurable ache inside every soul.
I personally found my connection with Pierrot through performance art, that brought with it stage fright. The clown was the perfect cover - such a perfect and ancient example of leaving ourselves behind to take on a role of expression. I was ready to face my professors and peers behind that white sheet of panstick and makeshift costumes.
But of course, the feeling of recognition and comfort I find in this character goes much deeper. I too see this figure and immediately see myself. I am a person filled with hopeful fragility, a hopeless romantic, a cynic, a feeler.
I too have experienced emotional pain that I have crafted into humour and entertainment.
Moreso, I find in Pierrot the comfort of ambiguity. You see, a clown has no gender, nor has it an agenda.
Once the makeup is applied and the clothes are worn, you become this being that is not questioned nor argued. You are simply- subconsciously- understood.
As Bowie himself once said, "I'm Pierrot. I'm Everyman.”
