The first interaction I had with Canadian photographer Mandy-Lyn Antoniou was at a show in Vancouver. I was wearing fur and burning out. Antoniou came up to me, grabbed my arm and fixated her big, blue marble eyes on mine and said, “I really admire your brain.” It was a weird yet intriguing statement, but that’s Antoniou.
Fast forward a few months later and Antoniou reached out to me asking if we could do a shoot together. I had seen her work and was attracted to not only the quality and perfection of her film photographs, but more so the overwhelming sexuality in her subjects. She could turn any woman into a 1970’s Playboy model. She could make girls into Jimi Hendrix.
“Women were designed by the artist, and men by the engineer,” Antoniou says. “A sexy guy elicits a similar reaction in me as to seeing a killer 4x4 truck. My body responds to the strength, power, proficiency of the design. Man is pretty impressive; designed to get it done. Seeing a sexy girl on the other hand is like seeing a sports car: you can hear it coming from up the block, you crane your neck to see, the body responds to its form, style, how it seems to purr down the road and take curves so effortlessly. Aesthetically, women are all about poetry in motion.”
Since picking up the 35mm Canon film camera her grandfather passed down to her, Antoniou has become a household name in the fashion and music scene publishing her work everywhere from Muse to Nerve to Vogue. She’s created multiple zines, made videos for HUF and collaborated with Altamont Apparel to create a line of T-shirts called “Rock n’ Roll Suicides” where she had women pose as dead rock icons like Sid Vicious and GG Allin. Antionou is the Suze Randell of 2015. She’s Easy Rider meets Jenny Lens. Posing as a subject for Antoniou is intense: she pierces into you touching and readjusting your hair all the while puffing on a joint. She draws every ounce of confidence and sex out of you. You get possessed by her meticulous direction. You turn into a beast. This is why her photographs are so good.
I sat down with Antoniou to talk about her past as a model, sexuality, empowerment and the upcoming hardcover book she is working on.
How did you go from modeling as a kid to being behind the camera?
It was something my mom had a lot of influence over. Besides, when you're really young like that the appeal of being a “model” is pretty unreal. In reality, it was awful. The expectations were savage but more than anything else what bothered me was how little humanity model's were expected and allowed to possess, like we were supposed to be totally mute, submissive, mannequins.
Some call them “coat hangers.”
[Laughs] We’d have nasty names hurled at us and still be expected to understand deftly how to pose with confidence. So, I was really into old movies and album covers and stuff, making up music videos in my mind. When I was in my teens, I started messing around with dollar store disposable cameras and this hand-me-down camera. It sort of went from there.
Your portraits of women is what you are most known for. I remember when you shot Gillian and there was her vagina. I was with a bunch of chicks and they were criticizing the photographs, mostly for exposing her cunt so brazenly.
That's awesome. I didn't know that those pictures ruffled any feathers.
Yeah, of a few. I think it just kind of sparked this uneasiness.
I love it. I think that a uneasy reaction is probably a lot more meaningful than a happy reaction. I'm not trying to make anyone feel anything specifically. There's no way to control a reaction, especially one of desire. The photos I take are explorations for me, into myself probably more than anything. I love to play. I love to push my boundaries and I really enjoy how other people can take and process those feelings and images in so many ways. There is no right or wrong; though I believe in equality and the right for women to express themselves however boldly or subtly as they like. Sex is a primitive essential that some people are upset and offended by. This is not my problem. It’s comedy! It’s life. I certainly find it strange and sad that a fairly common knee-jerk reaction to a confident, sexually expressive female is one of anger or distaste. I’ve seen a compulsion in some people toward assuming a woman is damaged or impure, less special or whole or dignified, when she is not afraid of your judgement. Anger is often just fear and insecurity with it's armor on.
I like to say “jealousy is insecurity wearing an ugly mask”, so maybe we should embroider the two sayings onto some throw pillows?
[Laughs] Oscar Wilde once said something like, "There is no creature in the world more feared than a woman who requires the approval of none.”
There's a lot of truth in that.
Our social world, historically, has not been designed in such a way as to encourage women to fear none. It teaches us to fear all, in many cases and so I can see why sexual confidence from a woman might be a real shit disturber, but there couldn't be anything more rock n’ roll than that.
How has music influenced your photography? Your dad was a rock n’ roll guy. You've always grown up around that scene.
It's so mega. It's everything. My entire structure, my restless romanticism and intense verve toward fantasy is Elvis, The Ronettes, Shangri-Las, New York Dolls, T. Rex, Bowie, Johnny Thunders, Black Sabbath, Seeds and 13th Floor Elevators and on and on. Music represents the property of magic to me, like I need water to drink and air to breath and pot to not be an asshole, but I need music to restore me and my faith in life because it's nothing but a big grey drag without it. It sounds cheesy, but I mean it. I think groupies are the spark plugs of rock n’ roll.
Let's talk about that. We live in a culture that still (despite how progressive people maybe perceive themselves to be) thinks of the hyper sexual woman as stupid or just slutty, essentially worthless. She's worth it when we need to jerk off to her and tear her down.
This is kind of a powder keg issue so I feel like I should choose my worlds very carefully. I guess that the impulse to tear down a sexually confident woman, especially amongst other women, is really just yesterday’s papers: an old world patriarchal mentality that's further mutated by bad management and a lack of perspective. It begins with the long religious history of male on female oppression, that we see very acutely in Catholicism, where we've got Adam falling out of God's grace because he can not control his desire for Eve. I mean, while men are generally the more physically powerful gender, women are spiritually far more powerful because we possess the natural magic of creating life. This is a heavy dose from any angle, for men, from a psychological perspective, if you think about it. That's no excuse to take advantage, but there it is. The Catholic belief system puts its heaviest restriction on the female sex, treating her “magical” ability to render a man “senseless” with her essence as her “indicator of evil”. Off the bat, there is no healthy reason for a woman to submit to a system that automatically condemns her for being naturally powerful. Then, we look at society today, here in North America specifically, and Capitalism's favorite method of control: divide and conquer. Men and women alike have been sold on a system that teaches us that right off the bat, right out of the womb, we are probably not good enough. That you'll need to buy X, Y and Z in order to achieve any status of value. And you have the tools of Capitalism; television and magazines, fashion and social media like Facebook and Instagram, simultaneously these things tell you to obsesses over yourself, that it's okay to obsess over yourself, but also always showing you by way of example through your social network or the celebrities of the times. what you lack and scaling you up against other people. Other people with more money, other people with more luck, more followers, more likes, whatever.
Right.
We live in a very chaotic, hostile environment loaded with aggressive, psychological manipulation. Our fears, the things we say we hate, which I think really means we fear, and most often those things are just prison bars we're holding in place because they help to create an illusion of control. To hate on other women, to hate on anyone, because they are different than you is nothing more than to be the blind pawn of sick system. Nothing more than being another miserable lemming and eating whatever is fed to you, allowing yourself to be divided and conquered. I really believe that womankind specifically is sensitive and compassionate enough by nature to raise above those tactics. Our ability to support and stand with one another is the only chance we've ever had at achieving gender equality.
If you could photograph any living person, who would it be?
I would love to shoot Lana Del Rey. Her whole Priscilla Presley vibe is so great. I would make a book all about her if I could.
You are coming back to Los Angeles soon to work on a new project?
I'm in the beginning phases of shooting a new hardcover photo book called “Play”. It will all be shot in a cabin on the Sunshine Coast. 35mm nude portraits of women in their element. I plan to shop it around in LA for support with publishing in September.
To close, what is the sexiest song of all time?
Well, Serge Gainsbourg was the sexiest, most romantic man of all time, so his instrumental song, “Cannabis” is the winner.
