Photographer Rankin and artist Damien Hirst have long been celebrated for their respective subversive studies on beauty. A definitely-overdue collaboration between these two old friends has finally arrived in the form of “Myths, Monsters and Legends,” on view now in Los Angeles at RANKIN Gallery, and soon to travel to the UK. So we sat digitally down with Rankin to ask him some questions on the eve of the exhibition.

Where is the intersection of terror and seduction?

Monsters are obviouslynon-existant, they serve a purpose as either metaphors
or as ways to entice/excite people into storytelling. So people like to be scared.

You integrate this notion with sensuality. Why?

I was interested in the crossover point of terror and seduction—I don’t
think that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. I think that,
historically, many photographers have explored and continue to explore a
certain fear factor in sexual imagery. On the flipside, there can be a
sensual element to something that is scary, but this is rarely investigated
in photography. I was fascinated to portray the narratives of the ancient
world through a modern lens, and also give it a certain seductive angle.

Photography is naturally a very seductive medium—you can get a glimpse of
something, and it immediately sparks the imagination. I love the way that
something can be alluded to either subtly or more overtly in photographs. I
wanted to make the photos sexy—it seemed like the right approach, and was
a natural take on the subject for me. It was a continuation of the direction
from my portraits and fashion photos! Plus, I was shooting the model Dani
Smith, who is naturally an incredibly beautiful and sensual person.
Although she was totally consumed within the prosthetics, her inherent
sensuality nevertheless came through in her wearing of the outfits. I
was responding to that on the shoots, and it came through in the pictures.

How does one become “legendary” today? How has this changed over the
past, say, several thousand years?

I have no idea how you become legendary. It seems everybody wants to be famous, but I want my
images to be remembered in a thousand years. I want those moments I capture
to have resonance with people in the future. We all want to live forever in
some way! Leave our mark on the world. But legendary is way out of my
league. I don’t even understand fame!

Some of this work seems to be rooted in the myths and legends that are
explicitly fictional; no one considers their religion to be “ancient
greek.” What about biblical myths? Where do you land on this? Favorites?
Would you consider it fiction? What about Hindu myths?

I chose to feature the creatures from the myths that I was familiar with and the ones that I knew I would enjoy the process of making. Of course some of them are totally fictional, but this didn’t detract from my interest in

them. In fact, it was more intriguing to me, because I am fascinated by the
imaginations that came up with these ideas in the first place. How the myths
came about, and why we love being scared or being forced to use our
imaginations. At the time, a lot of people would have believed these stories—which is an incredible concept to me—to actually believe in these
creatures. How fucking scary is that?

Did technology kill mythology? Are there no future myths?

That’s a really exciting question. I still have nightmares and dreams.

I don’t think that myths are dead, because I’ve been waking up for years
now with a new fantastical idea placed in my head while I slept.

But I do think that we have moved away from giving myths a role and place

in our moral and logical view of our modern world. The fracture of organised
religion and the fact that we’ve been to the moon means we inherently
believe we are a safe society that we are in control of. But fuck knows
what’s out there that could really be very other to what we know, and very
scary. I truly believe we haven’t encountered other life forms yet but
there have got to be some out there that are real. I love the myths around
that.
If you were to write a myth today, to create a symbol for the

contemporary condition, care to take a stab at describing it/her/whatever?
It would certainly be around what I’ve just talked about, and I’d

probably have to slip in a bit of science fiction. But I really don’t
think we can be on our own in this universe and I would love to create a
believable set of pictures about extraterrestrials that may tap into the
western society’s contempt for the rest of humanity. I’d enjoy the moral
positioning of that, and the controversy that it would inevitably raise.
These questions need to be posed, and I think that myths provide a good
vehicle for achieving that. Thats where we miss them in modern society.

 

Myths, Monsters and Legends is up now at RANKIN Gallery, 8070 Melrose Avenue, in Los Angeles.