The Meaning of Leopard Print
By Katie Ryder
4, May, 2017
PHOTOGRAPH BY ÉMILIE RÉGNIER, COURTESY BRONX DOCUMENTARY
CENTER
“Nancy,” Libreville, Gabon, 2015.
View full screen
From the couture of Christian Dior to the authoritative polish of Jacqueline Kennedy; from
the objectifying shredded pelts of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, to the gaudy spandex of
Peggy Bundy; the skin of a leopard—which, as we say, cannot change its spots—has been, in
American fashion, remarkably mutable. These days—on, say, the women of New York
City—leopard print, whether thrift or high fashion, seems to signify, more than anything, a
certain knowingness, and the wearer’s confidence that her own sartorial intentions, whatever
they may be, can withstand the print’s thick past: haughty luxury, prim sophistication, seedy
overexposure, rock, kitsch, and, of course, many shades of sex. Leopard—though so fixed and
loud—actually seems to be a welcoming surface for projection, if you can throw some selfpossession behind it.
In a new exhibition, “From Mobutu to Beyoncé,” at the Bronx Documentary Center, portraits
by the Montreal-born and Paris-based photographer Émilie Régnier present leopard-skin print
and fur as seen on women and men in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon,
Senegal, South Africa, France, Texas, and New York, testing the pattern’s fluidity, and
translating it across cultures. (The photographs, from a series called “Leopard,” are being
1
displayed alongside works from Régnier’s “Hair” project, which is composed of snapshotstyle images of women in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.) First, the Western viewer is reminded that
the leopard’s aura is quite more defined on a continent where the animals have actually
roamed, and where leopard skin has long conveyed political power and cultural distinction. In
South Africa, the pelts previously marked Zulu aristocracy and today play an important role in
the traditions of the Shembe Church. In various regions across the African continent, the fur is
associated with masculine power, and in Régnier’s photographs from Kinshasa, in Congo, we
find two representations of the former dictator Joseph Mobutu, whose reign lasted more than
thirty years. The ruler—who died in exile, in 1997—appears in one image in a framed
illustration, his lips parted, as if still about to speak, the leopard-print toque for which he was
known perched high on his head like a crown. In the second image, we see a man named
Samuel Weidi, a Mobutu impersonator, photographed with chin raised, cap angled toward the
sky, carved cane pressed to the dirt road below him, as if surveilling his kingdom—a
landscape of unfinished concrete structures, razor wire, and woods.
Régnier’s leopard-print portraits are shot with a democratic generosity. Each subject is
centered in the picture’s frame; almost all look directly at the camera, or viewer, and each is
posed still, unsmiling. Centered lighting, dim interiors, and often flat, matte skies all
contribute to the sense that the character portrayed is important, and the scene largely serious.
We find a Bettie Page look-alike in leopard lingerie, with legs slightly spread, and face stern;
a woman, perhaps in her fifties, in New York, in the art-world style of red lip, plain face, and
blunt bob, in a leopard-print wrap coat. In Dakar, a woman named Aïcha, in a partial leopardprint head scarf and dress, lies on a stained mattress before a scraped wardrobe topped with
laundry, and regards the viewer with a slightly suspicious pride. In a serene picture from
Libreville, Gabon, a young woman, Nancy, in a leopard-print bra, is seen on a long stretch of
beach that lies out of focus behind her. She is fresh from a swim, her belly and belly chain
pressed forward, one hand to her stomach and one on her hip. It is a portrait of beautiful
dominion.
The weights of fashion and inherited culture are, of course, quite different; likewise the
burdens of dictatorship versus those of democratic society, or the force of pride amid poverty
versus a prideful ennui. In a photograph taken at the Musée de la Chasse (Hunting) et de la
Nature, in Paris, a woman named Arielle Dombasle is pictured leaning against a grand
fireplace beneath a gilded portrait of a perhaps eighteenth-century man, in a wig, displaying
his rifle and animal kill, and a stuffed leopard growls over a leopard-print cloth beneath her.
Though Régnier has written that Arielle wears leopard as a symbol of “absolute femininity,”
this is also a portrait of dominion—of empire and its spoils.
Larry, in Texas, a white man covered in tattoos that mimic a leopard’s skin, provides a lovely
contrast. He’s pictured from the waist up, nude, and lying back on a stained couch in
seemingly close quarters. Régnier has said that Larry wanted to escape the human world, and
the lavish, even flamboyant, conviction of his decision, against the loneliness it seems to
belie, and the isolation sketched by Régnier’s frame, is moving. In the permanent costume of
a predator, he appears very innocent.
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-meaning-of-leopard-print?intcid=mod-latest
2