The Virgin Suicides | andrejrusskovskij.com

THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

“The Virgin Suicides”, the 1999 Sofia Coppola movie, taken from the homonym novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, left a weird taste in my mouth.
At first I disliked it, but then I found myself thinking more and more about it, to the point I felt like the boys/narrators of the book: completely under the spell of the Lisbon girls. There’s something gripping about them, something that really doesn’t let you go even when the book is over/the film is ended.
I started talking about the idea of this photoshoot with Nicola in March (you met her here: https://andrejrusskovskij.com/?p=2122), during the launch party of my first exhibition in London. I knew that she had two sisters and that they had some common physical traits, which made them the ideal candidates for the role. Nicola had an enthusiastic reaction and agreed to be part of it.
If I think about the Lisbon girls there are two different scenarios that come immediately to my mind: the boredom and frustration of their bedroom/prison and the idyllic dream the boys come up with while they’re reading Cecilia’s posthumous diary.
Isabel was meant to play the part of the fourth sister but overslept on the Saturday AM that was picked for the shooting. I guess somehow it worked out better this way, because, of course, as sisters, Michelle, Amy and Nicola didn’t have any inhibitions. I had four challenges that day: dealing with the indoor shoots with natural light, having two models, Nicola’s sisters, that I had never met before, taking portraits of three different people interacting with each other without making it look fake, making the outdoor shots look as dreamy as possible. Luckily the girls played the part perfectly and I only had to worry about the technical bits.