The Cover Uncovered: The groundbreaking intimacy of PJ Harvey’s ‘Rid of Me’
While the battle of Britpop was raging between Oasis and Blur, My Bloody Valentine were trying to find the fine line between making shoegaze and deafening listeners at their live shows, and Björk was transforming electronic music, PJ Harvey was crafting a unique world of her own. The 1990s saw the emergence of Harvey’s debut, the playful single ‘Dress’, before her first album, Dry.
Concerned with female sexuality and violence, Harvey’s debut album is both visceral and fun, moving between raw emotion and gig-ready showstoppers like ‘Sheela-na-gig’. As good as Dry is, when Harvey released her next record, Rid of Me, made with producer Steve Albini, critics were blown away. Heavier, with more grunge and blues influence, Harvey carved out a world that, like the album cover, feels murky, raw and messy.
The album opens with the title song, which begins slow and plotting, with Harvey seductively singing, “Tie yourself to me/ No one else, no/ You’re not rid of me.” The song builds with simmering tension before exploding into erotic and desperate territory – “Lick my legs, I’m on fire”, she wails. This sets the tone for the album, which journeys through empowering anthems like ‘50ft Queenie’ and ‘Man-Size’ (with the ‘Sextext’ version putting a creepier spin on the track), declarations of love for the moon (‘Yuri-G’) and dizzying ambiguity (‘Ecstasy’).
It’s an iconic album that has drawn in countless fans over the years since it was released in 1993. And, like most good albums, it has a cover that perfectly encapsulates the raw energy and atmosphere found within the songs. Framed between white space is a landscape photo of Harvey in the bath, narrowly cutting out her exposed breasts.
She has an expressionless look on her face – it’s hard to tell whether she’s happy or not or if she wants us to even see this image – and her skin is dappled with water. Captured in a moment of action, her hair is suspended in the air as she flips it across the side of her head. It looks like a dark mass, which works nicely with her shadowy features, such as her bushy eyebrows. The imagery also aligns perfectly with the song ‘Man-size’, which contains the words “Douse hair with gasoline/ Set it light and set it free.”
The intimacy of the photograph suits the personal nature of the songs on the album, which often feel as though we’re listening to something we shouldn’t. When we hear Harvey singing, “I beg you, my darling/ Don’t leave me, I’m hurting,” on ‘Rid of Me’, it’s hard not to feel as though we’ve walked in on a private moment, akin to accidentally discovering someone’s in the bath while trying to use the toilet.
The image was captured by her friend, Maria Mochnacz, who was dating John Parish, one of Harvey’s closest collaborators. The pair instantly began a creative partnership, with Harvey encouraging Mochnacz to further pursue her interest in photography. Thus, after working with Harvey on Dry, the pair worked together again on Rid of Me, capturing one of the 1990s’ most iconic music-related photographs in the process.
Mochnacz told The Guardian that the photo “was taken in my bathroom in Bristol.” She described how she had a specific idea in mind for the way she wanted Harvey’s hair to flick across the image. “I knew I wanted to make the water on Polly’s hair like a strange sculpture, almost solid. I took it in pitch black with a small flash. My camera was butted up right against the wall in my small bathroom with no room for me to look through the viewfinder.”
This, naturally, made taking the photo somewhat of a challenge, but Mochnacz’s attempt paid off. “I had to tell Polly roughly where to try and direct her gaze. My flatmate at the time was banging on the door, desperate to use the loo, so I had to shout at him to hang on. We were making art!’”
The image can now be found in practically any record store, adorning the cover of an album that remains one of Harvey’s best. It’s moody, impassioned, emotional, thrilling, and dark, and Mochnacz’s photograph couldn’t be more fitting.
