Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Christabel" is a photographic storytelling by Sojournposse photographers Salina Christmas and Zarina Holmes. It is the collective's ongoing project on photopoetry.

It is based on an 18th century poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge about a young woman, Christabel, whose life is taken over by a vampire named Geraldine. Christabel is also a story about inner conflict, guilt and suppressed desire. This work was influential in the birth of Gothic storytelling genre taking place at the end of that century.

Interpretations on this body of work, strong in its sexual undertones, have led some to assume that "Christabel" relates to Coleridge's opium hallucination, and lesbian fantasy. A popular theory is that "Christabel" is about Coleridge's relationship with fellow poet William Wordsworth.

This project is the second series of Christmas and Holmes's study on female character portrayal in Literature. Filmed partly on the campus of University College London (UCL), where Christmas studies anthropology, it is also a continuation of her research on 'frames' and 'remediation' last year, reflected in the artwork "One Thousand and One Nights". The focus has now moved on from the media, or 'placeholder', that contains and shapes the storytelling conventions, to the role that storyscape and 'play' (Huizinga, 1955) contribute towards the simulation of a digital narrative.

For their first project, "One Thousand and One Nights", the photography duo examined the complex dual nature of the female, reflected via the portrayal of the females in the ancient Persian tale it is based on.

"We rely on works of fiction, in any medium, to help us understand to help us understand the world and what it means to be human" (Murray, 1997). "The profound affinity in play and order is perhaps the reason why play seems to lie to such a large extent in the field of aesthetics. ... It is 'enchanting'" (Huzinga, 1955). "Play has the tendency to be beautiful."

For "Christabel", the storytellers were dressed by London-based vintage label, Love In The Afternoon. Special thanks to our muse, Myriam Lengline, and Yvonne Oliver for supporting this project.

Christabel will also be exhibited as a part of the "Perfume" photo exhibition by Sojournposse collective, a concept first introduced at a London Design Festival 2010 event at UCL in September.