A woman leans her shoulder against a plastered wall in an empty room, one leg extended, both feet bare on a floor of dull red and cream marble tiles. Her dress is a pale sand-coloured chiffon, sheer enough that the body reads through it everywhere, cut with a high collar, long sleeves and a cascade of ruffles across the hip. Her head is turned down and away. The wall behind carries a soft shadow of her head and shoulder. The room offers nothing else.
The photograph was made with whatever light came through a window out of frame, and the light does most of the describing. It picks out the ruffles at the hip, dies away along the wall, and gives the marble just enough sheen to establish that the floor is stone and old. A picture of a garment this transparent could easily have become a picture of a body; the light has been managed so that the fabric, and not the body, is the thing being read.
What goes unexplained is the room. It has a marble floor, a plain plastered wall, no furniture, no door in view, no window in view, and no indication of country or century. One takes it for somewhere Mediterranean and old, and one takes it on very little evidence. The photograph knows a great deal about the dress and has decided, quite firmly, to tell us nothing whatever about where it is.
A woman leans her shoulder against a plastered wall in an empty room, one leg extended, both feet bare on a floor of dull red and cream marble tiles. Her dress is a pale sand-coloured chiffon, sheer enough that the body reads through it everywhere, cut with a high collar, long sleeves and a cascade of ruffles across the hip. Her head is turned down and away. The wall behind carries a soft shadow of her head and shoulder. The room offers nothing else.
The photograph was made with whatever light came through a window out of frame, and the light does most of the describing. It picks out the ruffles at the hip, dies away along the wall, and gives the marble just enough sheen to establish that the floor is stone and old. A picture of a garment this transparent could easily have become a picture of a body; the light has been managed so that the fabric, and not the body, is the thing being read.
What goes unexplained is the room. It has a marble floor, a plain plastered wall, no furniture, no door in view, no window in view, and no indication of country or century. One takes it for somewhere Mediterranean and old, and one takes it on very little evidence. The photograph knows a great deal about the dress and has decided, quite firmly, to tell us nothing whatever about where it is.