Steven Meisel American, b. 5/06/1954

A rococo chaise longue, carved white and gilt, crested with roses, its striped mattress worn, has been carried out into a rough field and set down in the uncut grass. Bohary lies back across it, nude, a black astrakhan bolero fallen open, a cigarette held at the lips, dark hair cut in a blunt fringe. At one end two legs in sheer stockings and laced high heels cross in the air; at the other, past a long fall of black fur, a bare foot rests directly on the ground. The field runs on to every edge of the frame, ordinary, unmown, indifferent.

The studium declares itself immediately: the boudoir carried outdoors, the oldest fantasy in fashion photography, luxury made absurd and therefore modern. It was made for Alaïa, in the year the sculpted silhouette governed everything, and the tableau performs its ironies competently. I can read all of it, name each device, and remain entirely unmoved.

What pricks me is the grass. Not the nudity, not the gilt, not the cigarette held with such practised boredom, but the dry brittle grass pressing up around the scrollwork and closing over that bare foot. It tells me the couch was carried, that someone lifted it over the ruts and set it down, that this splendour ends a metre from where it begins. The photograph did not intend the detail and cannot control it, and that is why it stays with me: the field was there first, and will still be there when the couch goes back in the van.