Haunting

Have you ever encountered an artist who seemed like an instant soul-mate?

That's how I feel about British photographer Sam Taylor-Wood. Her "Crying Men" series -- images of male movie stars like Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law weeping -- was an obsession until I found the rare portfolio in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston bookstore. It was like acquiring the Holy Grail.

Now "Ghosts" -- her 2008 series inspired by one of my favorite books, Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" -- is slated to come to the Brooklyn Museum Oct. 30-Aug. 14. (The show will be held in the Herstory Gallery of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, which contains Judy Chicago's installation "The Dinner Party," in which Emily and sister Charlotte are honored.)

Discovering "Ghosts," I feel like the eccentric sister of the Hugh Grant character in "Notting Hill," who gushes to Julia Roberts' put-upon movie star, "I just know we could be great friends."

What is it about "Heights" that haunts? I think it is in part that it's a wholly original work of art -- as unfashionable as that idea is in our age of "appropriation" (otherwise known as plagiarism).

Think about it: As great as Charlotte's "Jane Eyre" is, there are lots of men like her Rochester, who make bad marriages and pay and pay for it. And lots of women like Jane, mousy good girls who secretly yearn to be loved by their bad boys for their sedate but sterling selves.

But there is no one -- no one -- like Emily's Cathy and Heathcliff. And indeed if there were, you'd run screaming in the other direction. The brutality with which Emily Bronte portrays their all-consuming relationship -- which crushes everything and everyone in its brambled path -- is like nothing else in literature. (The only film version ever to capture this is the idiosyncratic one starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche.)

In "Sexual Personae," outre cultural critic Camille Paglia theorizes that Heathcliff represents Emily mixed with Byron, a truly androgynous persona. Others have wondered if Emily was in love with God. "Heath cliff" -- a name that signifies the earth -- represents her union with God in death.

Me? I've always wondered if Heathcliff were the singularly self-possessed Emily -- writing her novel, stories and poems in obscurity while tending to the family at Haworth Parsonage -- and the betraying Cathy were the more conventional Charlotte, torn between literary (worldly) success and the sisters' closed society on the Yorkshire moors that Taylor-Wood has captured with such spare resonance.

That a book can conjure so many interpretations demonstrates just how haunting it remains.

Images of Sam Taylor-Wood's "Ghosts VI" (above) and "Ghosts II" (right) courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum. For more on the show, log on to brooklynmuseum.org or call 718-638-5000.

Georgette Gouveia is a reporter for Westfair Communications Inc., which publishes the Westchester County Business Journal, the Fairfield County Business Journal and HV Biz. You can read her stories at westfaironline.com.