Picture Me

Written by Carrie Jo Tucker on Wednesday, 08 July 2009 13:53

“Why be a prop in someone else’s story when you can tell your own?”

Scenes from "Picture Me"

With Picture Me, model Sara Ziff and filmmaker Ole Schnell have done just that. Imagine yourself at fourteen. Were you finishing 8th grade? Worrying about what to wear to school the next day? Now imagine yourself at fourteen – as a model. Your agency has flown you to Paris, the costs of which, along with your hotel and driver, are being billed back to you. You’re told where to show up, but not what to do, exactly - except smile and make everyone like you. Someone slaps your butt and says something in French, something that if you understood, would crush you. People are touching your body, inappropriately so – but you don’t say anything, because you don’t know what’s acceptable and God forbid you offend anyone lest you never get booked again. And one day, after you’ve been told you’re simultaneously “fresh” and “out”, when you find that the only thing you can control in your life is your weight, you open a check for $100,000 and barely blink an eye. All you can think about is how tired you are. “In a world that’s based in fantasy, nothing comes that quickly and easily without a catch,” says model Sara Ziff at the beginning of Picture Me, a firsthand look into the often-opaque industry of modeling and high fashion. Filmed over a five-year period by then-boyfriend and filmmaker Ole Schell, Picture Me chronicles the ascent of Ziff’s successful career, with inside glimpses of photo shoots and the backstage of Paris and Milan fashion shows.

In the process, it explores the complex relationship that people have with models - and that models have with themselves, humanizing anonymous faces we see in fashion magazines and on billboards. Schell and Ziff didn’t set out to make a film that’s being buzzed about as a dark expose of the industry. “When I first met Sara, she was eighteen, and had just started modeling full-time,” says Schell. “At first I’d just follow her with a camera, film her castings, and edit them together as a montage and give them to her as gifts. After showing my [writer and journalist] father some of the clips, he encouraged me to do something with them.” In addition to interviews with big-name photographers and designers, Picture Me relies on footage shot by the models themselves, eliciting confessions that would be impossible for an outsider to obtain. “There were unavoidable issues of youth, money, objectification,” says Schell. “What you do next, after your career is over.” And as with any career, you never know exactly what you’re getting into until it’s too late. There’s talk in the film of girls as disposable commodities, scouted younger and younger, like the 12-year-old on exclusive for Gucci.

A model talks about sexual assault at the hands of a 45-year-old photographer – when she was only sixteen. It doesn’t seem to register with anyone in charge that there’s something wrong with this. Agencies continue to send out young girls, the freshest faces. “People’s attention span is shorter,” says Schell. “By the time you arrive you’re almost gone.”Picture Me doesn’t offer any explanations, and it rarely judges. It’s a mirror into the experiences of these models; how they are treated, and how they feel about it. They cry, they break down – and sometimes offer little reaction at all when telling heartbreaking stories. But it’s easy to focus on the warts of a profession that’s often presented as glossy unreality. This particular story has a happy ending for Ziff. She’s gone back to school at Columbia, studying art history and literature, while still modeling part time, with an agency (DNA) she loves. And not everyone has bad experiences. Take Belarus model Tanya D., who’s walked for Chanel, Dior, and Hermes, among others. In Picture Me, she claims that becoming a model
at age fourteen was good for her; it was “good school.” She’s happy with the money she’s making. When asked how her life was before modeling, she frowns and shakes her head, not wanting to talk about it. But now, “I am sixteen and I feel much older.” She sounds older. She looks older. Is that a good or bad thing? Or, as presented in Picture Me, is it just…the way it is?

Q&A with Sara Ziff of Picture Me

Sara shares her thoughts on the current state of the modeling industry, as well as what she hopes people take away from the film.

Carrie Jo Tucker: Do you think the industry has gotten better or worse since you started modeling?

Sara Ziff: My experience in the industry has gotten better over time, but that's probably largely because I'm older and wiser; I don't think the industry has really changed. Models today are still faced with the same problems I experienced, from pressure to abandon their education at an early age to lack of financial transparency and sexual harassment. The biggest problem of all for models is not being empowered by the system in which we work to demand our rights. The industry is totally unregulated and these young women need protection.

CT: Can modeling be a good learning experience for some girls, preparing them adequately for the adult world, or is it impossible not to grow up too fast?

SZ: Many of the models come from humble beginnings in countries in Eastern Europe and Brazil. For these girls, modeling might be their ticket out of poverty. It's a unique opportunity for anyone, financially and in terms of working with the many wonderful, creative people in the industry. That being said, there is something very wrong with an industry that expects children to essentially
abandon their formal education to live halfway around the world unsupervised, doing sexually objectifying work. Whatever the gain, I think the risks outweigh the benefits, especially considering the short-lived nature of these careers.

CT: What - if anything - do you think could protect these young girls against unrealistic expectations and potentially harmful situations?

SZ: The film was, in part, an effort to raise awareness and start a meaningful dialog. Two models in London recently established a relationship with Equity, the actors' union in London, allowing fashion models to join and enjoy the same benefits. Something similar needs to happen in the US. Right now the only people advocating for the models' best interests are the agents, and what's in the agent's
interest is not always best for the girl.

CT: How do you feel about the press that the film has been getting – in regards to the emphasis that has been placed on the sexually abusive situations?

SZ: Sexual harassment is only one of many issues that models in the film discuss, but this issue seems to have dominated in the press. I didn't expect it to become paramount, but it's an extremely important issue. It's also important to remember the extreme youth of these models, who are often too young to cope with compromising and humiliating situations that would be difficult for anyone, let alone a child. Overall, I think that our culture of sexual objectification of women leads to sexual
exploitation of women. An image doesn't exist in a vacuum - it reflects power dynamics and desires. As consumers we should ask, Why are we buying into this? Why do we want to look at images of vulnerable girls?

CT: What do you hope people take away from the film?

SZ: I hope that the film will help start a movement. There are already murmurs, but there's a lot more work to be done. The fashion industry is filled with smart, creative, powerful women who should be helping, not hurting the young women who are the face of this business. Some measure of protection would not only benefit the models, but would have a real effect on the kind of images the industry produces, and that would be very positive for women in general.

by Carrie Tucker
images courtesy of Picture Me

For more information, visit myspace.com/picturemefilm.