The photograph captures the actress and director Joan Chen, and a vase holding red flowers. The photograph was taken in 1993 by one of the greatest cinematographers of our times, Christopher Doyle (Chungking Express, Hero), and is called A Rose Photographed Is What a Rose Photographed Is. The photograph is part of a collection, The Space of a Kiss, that was first shown in 2004 at Howard House (now, it is second in Billy Howard's Howard House Projects at Collins Pub). Now those who know Joan Chen's career will instantly recall her famous scene in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. Chen's character, the second and younger wife of the emperor, goes mad during a terrible party. As fancy men and women are celebrating the agreement between the emperor and the enemy of his countrymen, the Japanese, Chen begins to eat a flower, chewing its petals—her red lips, the green stem, the slow and bitter swallowing. It's the perfect image: beauty eating beauty. In Doyle's picture, Chen is domestic, casual, and ordinary. She is not caught in the middle of a world-historical event; she has the appearance of a person who would never devour flowers. recommended