A new book by Peter York reveals intimate photographs of some of the 20th century’s most notorious diotators’ homes. Novelist DOUGLAS COUPLAND wonders what it must have been like to take the pictures.
remember once seeing a photo of Muammar (iaddali’s master bedroom. it was in Time or .'\'ewsweek and it showed a circular bed with black silk sheets. black headboard — black everything really. including. above the bed. a set of black panther figures of the sort won at a transient l‘unl‘air arcade. liven to early teenaged eyes. I looked at the photo and thought. 'Hmmmm. Didn‘t they hire a stylist for this shoot'." The sheets were wrinkled as it the photographer had said. ‘Kiki. can you give the sheets a shake out the window'.’ The odour of man musk is a hit overpowering. and for (iod's sake. don't inhale a pube.‘
What the photo had was authentieity. lts rumpled sheets and hapha/ardly arranged ornaments remind tne ot' a llel/o.’ photo shoot I saw a few years later in the 1980s: ‘Britt likland at Home with Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray (‘ats’. I remember the photo shoot because you could see the defects in their carpeting and nobody had removed the mundane clutter from the DIY bookcase. Britt and Slim Jim were real. dammit? It was gripping imagery. Was this even the same photographer who had shot (iaddati‘s bedroom'.’ Perhaps. But in (iaddali‘s case. what I wanted to see next were the contents of his bedside drawers: Kleenex. Astrolube. a hall eaten kebab and bootleg photos ol‘ Henry Kissinger. Jill St John and Agent X having a three-way in a l)avos hotel.
Another thing (iaddati’s bedroom reminded me of was the bedrooms of my two older teenaged brothers. ll‘ (iaddal'i had placed a pyramid ol‘ (‘orona beer bottles on a side table or on the window ledge. my brothers would have fully agreed. and the bottles would have looked in tune with the rest of (iaddal‘r‘s love shack. But the thing about bedrooms ol‘ adolescent boys and bedrooms of dictators is that (Mussolini aside) there is almost no possibility oi their owners ever actually seoring in these spaces. Democratically elected politicians prefer to have their sex in swimming-pool cabanas. pantries and limousines paid for by tax-paying citizens of the free world. Sex in the official bedroom? I think not. lrnagine l’at Nixon walking in on Richard and (‘andy. the teenager who got separated from her high school's tour of the White House. It’s not going to happen. I suspect the secret language of such dictatorial interiors is almost entirely directed to impress visiting pals rather than. say. young Stacey from Tripoli Hard Rock Cafe. Muammat; don't get your hopes up too ltigh. les. she 's way out o/‘your league. but what with the .silk sheets and tlte ott_\'.\‘ popper dispenser: you mightjust eomplete tlte deal.
In this same vein ol‘ thought. I remember that my brothers also had a tree tort. There they kept porn. cigarettes and beer in abundance. (iirls weren't allowed. but then it‘s hard to imagine a girl ever wanting in.
My point in all of this is that the psychic dynamics of generic teenage boys in their own spaces and those of dictators at home aren‘t all that different. Both are dense with assertions of potency and risk-taking: animal skins. posters depicting sci—ti warriors rescuing cheesy sluts l'rom
mythical dangerous creatures . . .
And yet there‘s a problem here. A dictator‘s house has to impress the buddies. but it also has to be photographed and shown to the serfs. This results in an interesting clash ol‘ needs. Yes. I'm your dielator who loves and ('al‘es for you. the people. but I ant also sttulmaster ol'the galaxy. a man of taste and edueation not a spendthri/t
but. rather: a (lever and taste/id manipulator of symho/ie imagery in a way tltat lie/its someone of
my I)I(t.\‘.\'ll'('lI(’.\'.\‘. Andy/or what it's worth. just ignore that Kim .long-il guy in North Korea ~ he gives dietatot's (I bad name. ll'hat's with tltose dove-grey pantsuits and those glasses 7 They make ltim look like a repeat sex offender:
This Iumpen block of green-painted concrete (below) isn’t a colonial outpost of the Moscow central library in post-war Singapore as one might presume, but the abode of a certain Joseph Stalin. Always the entertainer, even after his wife’s suicide in 1934, the man of steel enjoyed spending time at home plotting assassinations with friends. Just don’t question the functional architecture: it’s perfectly on-message.
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He may be Norwich City when it comes to the dictator’s league but Tito was Chelsea when it came to style: flash, expensive and mildly upsetting. Here he is (below), relaxed and comfortable, despite being surrounded by more jungle livestock than David Attenborough has seen in a lifetime: a perfect message of defiance for his enemies. Somewhere between Stalin and Puff Daddy, Tito’s was a truly Technicolor world.
The year is 1938 and you’re a photographer working lot [fl/e Herons Berlin edition and suddenly you get summoned to Berchtesgadan. Your instructions‘.’ ‘We want you to bring out :\doll"s playlul side. You know ‘ tind his joy.’ The catch is that you not only have to l‘ind Hitler‘s playl’ul llirty side. but also take photos which show all the lolks llitler grew up with that he‘s not only powerful but. dammit. he has taste too. lou see. the thing is. l eontrol the universe and you don 't. )ou ran see how I might need ~ not just want hut need stat/ed endangered speeies surroutuling me. They didn't even mind
Try and keep a dictator away from the stuffed wildlife (below) and we’ll show you a full time job for some poor unfortunate who has his work cut out - for taxidermy is a bloody thankless task. Nicolae Ceausescu went bonkers mid-way through his tenure as the ‘General President of Romania’ but that still doesn’t justify the rolls of carpet and lifeless felines stewn about his not so modest abode.
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