Nick Knight’s collaboration with Alexander McQueen began in 1996 and continued until McQueen’s final collection, the critically acclaimed Spring/Summer 2010 Plato's Atlantis, for which the present photograph was made. In a candid interview conducted by Knight before the collection was unveiled, McQueen expressed his idea behind the title: ‘Atlantis for me is a metaphor for Neverland … it could be anywhere in your mind.’ Plato's Atlantis became the first fashion show to be streamed live on the internet when Knight’s groundbreaking multimedia platform SHOWstudio streamed it from Paris. As leading forces in their respective fields, Knight and McQueen were both creators and visionaries who shared a similar approach to their work.

In Snakes, we see model Raquel Zimmermann lying on a bed of sand, her body merging with an undulating mass of serpents. Knight reimagines McQueen’s Atlantis and presents us with a sensuous, predatory creature in a fantastical land. McQueen best sums up this spellbinding photograph: ‘I think [women’s] sexuality is their ultimate weapon … I think a woman’s sexuality in any shape or form is a powerful thing.’ Knight was awarded an OBE for his services to the arts in 2010, and his work has been exhibited widely, including Tate Modern, V&A and National Portrait Gallery. Another print of this image was featured in his recent solo retrospective at Daelim Museum in Seoul, South Korea.