By MICHAEL AUSHENKER | Contributing Writer
It’s all there in Melinda Lerner’s photography: fashion models displaying impeccable naked bodies with paper bags over their heads with their true feelings scrawled on them: a bored or sad face. The cheeky photos, gorgeously shot in black and white, are all part of some 70 Lerner images on display through Monday at Hollywood Athletic Club in Los Angeles.
Lerner’s portraits are never dull: If she shoots a close-up of a woman’s face, she has her scrunching her lips wearing hair-curlers with a cigarette dangling from her mouth. Another portrait—of a full-frontal nude man in a chair—throws the viewer off again because said naked man is wearing high-heeled, bolt-studded platforms.
Lerner also photographed some appropriately lurid, ghostly figurative scenes inside the long-gone-and-lamented Ambassador Hotel as well as sensitive nature shots taken in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Unfortunately, Lerner herself is no longer with us. Diagnosed with MDS, she experienced a problem with a bone marrow transplant earlier this year. She died on March 6 at the relatively young age of 56.
“She had a very good eye for timing,” said the love of her life, British-American film composer John Powell. “As a musician, I realized how good she was at timing a shot. She would get shots of people that would reveal their soul.
“She had been talking about shows,” the film composer continued. “After she died, once I started going through everything and her computer as well, I realized how many thousands and thousands of images she’s done. She left a lot of it organized.”
Many of Lerner’s playful images reflect her acerbic sense of humor.
“She had an edge,” Powell recalled. “She was a straight-talker, really authentic. She would find this way of subverting ideas. It almost wasn’t intellectual but instinctual.”
The daughter of a cartoonist and an antique doll dealer, the native of England also derived interesting imagery out of some very life-like Reborn dolls.
“This is definitely a commentary on [her mother’s profession],” Powell said.
Despite her parents’ fascination with the creative world, Lerner’s talent remained dormant well into adulthood.
“The irony is that she didn’t do anything artistic until she came to America with me,” Powell said. “Then she got bored and picked up a camera in 1997.”
Of course, Powell was aware of her photographic passions but not to the extent that surfaced since her passing.
“We had some of them around the house,” Powell said. “I’ve probably seen 20 of them. Suddenly, I realized how much there was.
“I look at some of her photos both family and art photos I realized how much was going on while I was working.”
Powell, who has scored numerous DreamWorks animated features as well as the Jason Bourne movies (including this month’s “Jason Bourne”), said the two artists were never in competition.
“She was very unimpressed with me,” Powell said. “She was not impressed with anything I did. I think she liked going to the Oscars once. [Likewise,] I wasn’t looking very hard at what was going on [with her work].”
Together for 29 years, Powell and Lerner had lived together in the Palisades since 2002. Lerner did not draw inspiration from anything directly Palisades, her longtime partner said. If anything, she liked shopping in the Village (Elyse Walker was a favorite destination).
“What the Palisades gave us was a studio,” Powell said. “I have a recording studio and she had a photography studio; The perfect environment to be able to create. Once she got here, she really thrived here.”
In addition to the photographs, Lerner left behind Powell, their son Oliver (soon turning 16), and many people who loved her. Powell recently threw a celebration of Lerner’s life, inviting family and friends from England and Australia as Powell reunited to perform with members of The Faboulistics, the cover band he used to play keyboards with back in England when he was a struggling film composer.
Even though the Lerner exhibit runs barely a week, Powell hopes many Palisadians will head over to Hollywood across the holiday weekend to experience Lerner’s work.
“It’s very hard to retrospectively form a complete picture of what she’s trying to do,” Powell said. “She struggled to find her place in the art world. But as I really look back at it, I can see that everything was there, all the ideas were flowing.”
Hollywood Athletic Club is located at 6525 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles. (323) 462-6262; hollywoodathleticclub.com
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
