Black & White Sunday: Low-Key

Posted on March 20, 2016

The Lady of the Camellias (La Dame aux camélias) was first written as a novel by Alexandre Dumas (son) and later rewritten as a play. It also served as inspiration for Verdi’s La Traviata where the main character is no longer called Marguerite Gautier, but Violetta Valéry.

Marguerite Gautier, the heroine of the Dumas’s novel was a courtesan (modeled after his real life lover) with a selfless heart that gave up her own happiness for the sake of others. Tragic and brave in her life choices she never regretted them.

Marguerite: “No, no. I’m not weak. I’m strong. It’s my heart. It’s not used to being happy.”

Here I used low-key photography to represent one of my favourite female literary characters. This week you are asked to make a low-key photograph. You can shoot it as such or maybe obtain the chiaroscuro effect in post processing. As a linguist I will also appreciate alternative interpretations of low-key that do not necessarily imply contrast spot lighting, so you can approach the subject as “discrete”, “secretive”, “understated”. You know that the choice is all yours. Leave the links to your posts in the comment section and link to this challenge in your post.

P.S. The attached music is not from La Traviata, but from the movie La storia vera della signora delle camelie (another movie made after the Dumas’s literary masterpiece) composed by Ennio Morricone.