‘Hard’, ‘awkward’, ‘apocalyptic’… What’s behind this photo of Elon Musk and his mother by Annie Leibovitz

In the Musk family, I am asking the mother… and the son. The boss of Space X, Tesla and And for this shoot, the billionaire was accompanied by his mother May, the muse of L’Oréal. In an Instagram post, the main stakeholder expressed his excitement. “I was really excited to do this shoot with my incredible son Elon, the legendary Annie Leibovitz. Fortunately, he had five minutes to spare in New York.

In this dark-toned photo, a mother and son look at the camera. Elon Musk sits on a high stool, leaning against a penthouse in the heart of Manhattan. His mother, May, in a white shirt in quiet elegance, leans against his back, her left hand in her pocket.

“Post-apocalyptic image”

The family portrait presented by May Musk on September 18 has not yet been commented on. Still, “it’s impressive and even disturbing,” notes body language expert Steven Bunard. “Also, we’re relieved to see life back, specifically Manhattan, and that the world hasn’t collapsed. It’s almost a post-apocalyptic picture. You just have to see the colors, the expression of the characters, the lack of scenery…”

For Stephen Bunard, this photograph, which seems almost painted, also expresses “a kind of timelessness”. “It’s interesting because it fits well with the character of Elon Musk, who ultimately doesn’t fit the era, but intends to shine in something bigger than himself, both on a temporary level (like many others, he has a desire to develop projects that go beyond human understanding), but also geographical (because he has ambitions that are beyond the earthly),” the author deciphers. Your gestures say out loud what you are thinking quietly (1).

The character is also very interesting from Stephen Bunard’s point of view because of his play on dualities. “We contrast the industrial with the wood, the modern city pushed to its paroxysm, and the green lung, here, Central Park, man and woman, black and white, youth and experience… This is about the message; a very new world that does not forget the old.’

“Dominant Personalities”

As for the characters, both Elon and May Musk are “dominant, decisive and even condescending”, the expert analyzes. “For example, May Musk is taking a bellicose stance. We can easily imagine her as an Amazon on her horse. We even have the impression that she is giving birth. Let him carry Elon Musk like he had a big baby carrier. Elon Musk, on the other hand, is dominant and other-oriented.”

This brings back the idea of ​​a tough one who is neither well-off nor cooperative.

Steven Bunard

If we enlarge the image, the expressions of the mother-son duo are revealing. “May Musk, with this white hair and this angular face, looks a lot like Glenn Close’s Cruella. 101 Dalmatians. With his raised left eyebrow and lack of a smile, you’d think he was sizing us up, even watching us. There is an idea that the other, on the contrary, must prove themselves. And then, with his right hand in the air, he was almost a dish short,” explains Stephen Bunard. What to say about Elon Musk? “If you split his face in two, the left side of his face looks too hard. Now it’s rare because it’s the inner part, internalized and therefore generally milder. Here it brings back the idea of ​​a tough one who is neither prosperous nor cooperative. In addition, his lower eyelids are lowered, which means that he is not necessarily comfortable, or comfortable with the person next to him. Is he in a bad mood on the day of the shoot? We can ask ourselves the question.”

There is no mother-son relationship

Another element calls Stephen Bunard. “There is something very paradoxical in this photo. if we delete one, the other can live without the other. It’s like two separate photos that have been combined for a montage. There is no obvious connection between the two characters, the mother-son relationship is not visible, and there is no complicity. As for the emptiness of the decor, the specialist sees in it an “allegorical desire to say that everything needs to be built.” “This emptiness reflects the power of the spirit. “There is nothing around us, we have to build everything.”

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Annie Leibovitz didn’t just caption this photo of Musk’s mother-son duo. He also took a photo of May on the beach under a very heavy and dark gray sky.

Wink or not, May Musk reproduced one of Annie Leibovitz’s most famous photos a few years ago. Because the so-called senior model is developing a certain taste for provocation like her son. In 2011, aged 63, she posed naked and pregnant on the cover New York Magazinea nod to Demi Moore’s famous photo.

“It was a big first for me,” he recalled last year Madame Figaro . “Obviously, we asked a real pregnant woman for the lining of her abdomen, and then everything was put together with digital retouching. The funny thing is that when I met people after the number was published, they congratulated me. So I answered them. “But I’m over 60 anyway.” This cover was a political act, it talked about the desire to have children after 50, a taboo among women, but strangely not among men.

(1) Your gestures say out loud what you are thinking quietly, by Stephen Bunard, published on March 8, 2018, Ed. SoBook, 270 p., €20.