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Txema Yeste

Spanish, b. 1972
Flower Field, 2018
Archival Pigment Print.
61 x 68.6 cm / 24 x 27 in / Dye-Transfer Print
76.2 x 101.6 cm / 30 x 40 in / Archival Pigment Print
116.8 x 154.9 cm / 46 x 61 in / Archival Pigment Print
59 x 76 3/4 in / 150 x 195 cm
Hand-signed by artist, mounted, titled, editioned and print date in ink label affixed to mount verso
Edition of 5 — 61 x 68.6 cm / 24 x 27 in
Edition of 5 — 76.2 x 101.6 cm / 30 x 40 in
Edition of 3 — 116.8 x 154.9 cm / 46 x 61 in
Edition of 1 — 59 x 76 3/4 in / 150 x 195 cm
© The Artist

A single white bloom has taken up position directly above her head, more or less where a crown would sit, and although it is probably an accident of framing, nothing else in this picture behaves like an accident. Once you spot it, the coronation is under way. The stems stop being foreground clutter and become a procession; the dusk arranges itself into ceremonial peach and olive; and the woman at the centre, chin fractionally raised, accepts it all as her due.

The scale is gleefully unreliable. Shot from somewhere near the ground, the flowers have been promoted to trees, which makes her either tiny or colossal, and the cape decides the matter: colossal. It pours off her shoulders in a glittering blue-green pyramid, thousands of sequins going off like a night sky with the patience removed, and it abolishes the ground entirely. It would be useful to report what she is standing on. There is no evidence she is standing on anything. Flowers this size suggest a fairy tale; a dress this size suggests the fairy tale is hers to administer.

Yeste belongs to the front rank of Spanish fashion photography, his pages running through Numéro, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, and his editorial work keeps returning to the elements: fire, water, sand, wind. This picture adds flora to the list and then, characteristically, overdoes it, in the way that only a photographer entirely in control can afford to overdo things. The white flowers lean in like courtiers. She outshines them anyway, several thousand sequins to the good.

Flower Field