BERNADINISM

Images of female nudes reflected in mirrors.

More images

I have just finished reading The Graduate. When I say reading I really mean listening to the audio book I borrowed from the library because I hardly read nowadays. And since I read the book, I thought I might as well see the film. I was struck by how good the cinematography was. I remember how arousing it was to me as a teenager. Older girls and women were as sexy as hell and totally out of my reach. When I finally got the chance to bang an older woman at 27, I did not like it and was put off them for good. Now I am Mrs Robinson’s age, I prefer younger women.

Seeing the film reminded me of a picture I once took. I sketched the idea of knickers hanging from the stiletto of an extended leg. That did not seem to be enough somehow and I wanted some interaction going on in the picture so I drew a man in the background. Straight away, here was a version of the famous poster of the film. I shot the picture as part of a story for a fashion magazine.



If you can’t see the video click here

Making art out of leaves. This also throws light on my thinking processes when it comes to photography.

New Book: Gratuitous Sex and Violence – My Favourites

Preview and buy on line here.

After being inspired by the famous freeze frame photographs by Harold Edgerton of a bullet passing through an apple and other impact photographs, I decided to experiment myself. I borrowed a sound activated switch from a friend and began taking portraits of with bursting balloons and shattering glass and bottles.

The camera shutter is opened up in the dark and when there is a loud enough sound the flash goes off. I shot these with a flash gun at low power because the duration of the flash is shorter than full power. The switch has two adjustments, one for sound sensitivity and another for time delay that you can adjust for maximum impact. A friend of mine was a masochist and it occurred to me to do some pictures with her. She and her partner had came around with a bag of flagellation implements.

More pictures here.

My latest book is entitled, Gratuitous Sex and Violence – My Favourites. I came close to being arrested when I was nearly caught standing over my model with an axe for the cover shot. Danger and a sense of unease have long been apart of my work. A woman is chased through a dark wood or is mugged on a Thames footpath or becomes the victim of a serial killer. We see sex and violence all about us in the media, sometimes together or separately. Pondering upon its ubiquity in the media and the hold it has in our imaginations, I decided to include it as part of my new project. I have made some of the pictures more filmic and suggestive of narrative.

Preview the book

Blowing Smoke in the corridor outside my flat

These are some unpublished pictures from my first magazine commission for a magazine called For Him Magazine. It was later sold and became FHM. I shot this in the corridor outside my flat. I had first hire a dummy to put the clothes on but that was not working out so I had to try another tack. I like the peculiar quality of the smoke he is breathing out that looks more solid than smoke.

Silohouette

Using flash outdoors at dusk meant that there was often a dark silhouette against the sky when the subject moved. I thought I would exploit this and got the model to move his head to profile during the second or so exposure.

A model talks of nightmares she has about me and my serial killer potential.

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How to Become a Serial Killer

Alva Bernadine has a head full of bad thoughts, and in emptying them out on this blog, he offers a few tips on how to become a serial killer.

Ever since I can remember, I have wanted to be a serial killer. I see the serial killer as the great performance artist of modern society. The killer dispatches strangers in grim and gruesome ways and the public thrill with disgust and revulsion but are held in the thrall of this great attractant. To murder is the supreme form of transgression. To do it once and with motive is bad enough, but to do it repeatedly without apparent motive is beyond the reasoning of most ordinary people. It implies madness and there is nothing more frightening than the madness of others. After all, there is no reasoning with the mad, they can do anything at anytime and that scares us. The serial killer who murders six people is far more frightening and news worthy than the contract killer who murders twelve.

Art can also be a form of transgression, where the artist reveals that which is hidden or unregarded and holds it up to the light. What the serial killer holds up in front of our eyes to reflect upon, is the evil of which we are all capable. It is ineffable wickedness, which most of us would describe as animal – only animals are not evil, they are only governed by their instinct. Evil requires premeditation so can only reside in humans. Art is also entertainment – so is ghastly murder which we read lustily in our daily papers. Now here comes the syllogism: If art is transgressive and entertaining and serial killing is transgressive and entertaining, then serial killing is art. A painter produces pictures while a serial killer produces dead bodies. If we find the work of the artist of great interest, we become interested in the life of the artist. And that is even more the case with the serial killer. The personality of the killer is of more fascination than that of his victims, the names of whom nobody can remember. It could be said that he is a work of art in his own right. He is an artist and an artwork at the same time – in other words a performance artist.

The unfolding of centuries has also seen the gradual democratisation of serial murder. In medieval times it was rare and in the province of aristocrats, the like of Gilles de Rais, who held dominion over his serfs, and consequently the power of life and death. In the nineteenth century it filtered down to the bourgeoisie. At the present time it is most practiced by the working class, and there have been women appearing on the scene too in recent years. This quite remarkably follows the democratisation of politics. First the aristocrats wrest power from the sovereign, then the gentry wrest power from the aristocracy, the middle classes from the gentry, the working classes from them and finally women from men. With the industrial age came large cities and the psychic disturbances that accompany them. The murder of strangers has become possible with the anonymity they engender, so there are more serial killers.

So how do you become a serial killer? Here are a few tips. First study the Book of Revelation – it is the serial killer’s favourite inspiration. You then kill a couple of people and nobody realises any connection. Then you kill three. By four, using the same modus operandi , the police get concerned and it leaks to the press. Kill another and it is front page news. Vulnerable groups are warned to be extra vigilant. Kill another and panic ensues. Women stay in the their homes after dark and psychics are called in. Kill another and start taunting the police with communications, the letters of which are cut out of newspapers. To create the right sensation of disgust and fear amongst the public it is a prerequisite to despatch your victims in horrendous and macabre ways. Jack the Ripper would slice his victims from throat to genitals, while Jeffrey Dahmer would eat bits of them and chop them up for  disposal in acid. You may wish to come up with something just as ghastly.

You may be able to get away with your crimes for years  but, of course, you will finally get caught because you are spotted by a witness or one of your victims gets away or you get over-confident or careless. But that is all part of it because you then become a media star. . Newspapers will interview your neighbours who will say you were a quiet loner and you looked ordinary. The police will ask how many you have killed and you exaggerate because you want the extra kudos. What does it matter – ten, twenty, forty , a hundred – you know you are never getting out of gaol. Maybe by this time you start betraying multiple personalities. The question is are you mad or are you sane? Surely anyone who commits so many motiveless murders must be insane – or perhaps evil? Anyway, society has no use for such as you, so you may as well be dispatched.

Things settle down a bit and just a year later, there is a trial and you are back on the front pages. After months in the blaze of publicity you are finally condemned to spend the rest of your life in prison or high security mental institution. Authors approach you for your life story and then there are documentaries and TV, and if you are in America you get interviewed for TV from prison. The public will be surprised at how such a monster could look so unremarkable. If you kill enough people  or your crimes are sensational enough, the public will always be fascinated by you. Loony women start corresponding with you because they feel such empathy. They may even want to marry you. You look at their picture and think, “I wouldn’t mind killing her.” You believe yourself omnipotent and that you have the power of life or death. From time to time, to pique flagging interest, you mention hitherto undiscovered murders. Parents who think you have something to do with the disappearance of their child, beg you to reveal the whereabouts of their bodies. Over the years you become an icon of evil.

Do not get mixed up between a serial killer and a mass murderer, which is a common mistake. A serial killer generally kills singly over time, while a mass murderer climbs a high place and starts gunning down all and sundry. The former is the ultimate performance art, while the latter is mere brutishness. As a heterosexual male, my natural victims would be women, but nearly forty years of feminism has not been wasted on me, so I will have to kill men in equal quantities, maybe going through the races as well for good measure. When I was young I used to watch Zorro films and he would always inscribe a Z as his mark. I would let my victims’ blood and leave a paper boat floating in it.

I think London is a sewer filled with the detritus of humankind. There are all sorts of degenerates, punks, prostitutes, pimps, muggers and thieves.  People who would mug or kill old ladies for the ten pence in their purses. The city needs cleaning up. These punks should be wiped out. They should be exterminated. That is it – they should be exterminated with extreme prejudice. We need to to get rid of all the filth, all the corruption, all the defilement, all the dirt, the foulness, the grossness, the impurity, the nastiness, obscenity, pollution, pornography, uncleanliness. Sweep it clean! Sweep it clean!

You see, I have these bad thoughts in my head…