Anything to get a good snap! Tyler Shields photographs an alligator and actress gnawing on $100,000 crocodile skin Hermes Birkin bag
Daily Mail
2014.05.14
He’s made a name for himself thanks to his controversial photo shoots, and Tyler Shields’ latest offering is up there with the most shocking.
This time, the celebrity photographer has fed a Hermes Birkin bag worth around $100,000 to an alive and deadly alligator.
Tyler snapped pictures of the reptile and actress Ana Mulvoy-Ten sinking their teeth into the hugely expensive and highly-coveted handbag, which poignantly was blue crocodile skin.
The 32-year-old told MailOnline that it took him seven months to get hold of the bag – the second he has destroyed in the name of art – due to a waiting list, but just four days to find an alligator.
The shocking images show Ana, 22, just separated from the animal with the tote, while lying on the ground in a black leotard and matching heels.
In some of the shots they are both gnawing on the handbag, while others see Ana feeding it to the alligator and in one he is left to get stuck into it himself.
Tyler, who most recently photographed Rumer Willis, said they were ‘inches from death at any moment’.
‘At one point during the shoot when Ana and the gator were both biting the bag it closed one of its eyes as if it was going to attack her, but did not,’ he revealed to MailOnline. ‘It was one of the most insane moments I have ever photographed.’
As for how they set up the shot in the first place, Tyler explained that it involved a lot of time and patience.
‘It was a game of inches,’ he said. ‘When we started the day it was feet, and slowly as the day progressed we got closer and closer to the gator until Ana was inches away.’
He added: ‘I have been wanting to do this for over a year and finally made it happen.’
Tyler took the pictures of the Nickelodeon alum and star of his new movie Outlaw, and their scaly friend in downtown Los Angeles, and reveals that the Birkin is now ‘full of gator teeth holes and is destroyed.’
He made headlines in May 2012 when he set another Hermes Birkin bag, this time in red crocodile skin, on fire and then sliced it with a chainsaw.
The alligator images are each an edition of three and part of Tyler’s latest art series Indulgence.
Indulgence will be shown at the Guy Hepner gallery in Los Angeles and Imitate Modern gallery in London.
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