A second ago the wind that lifts the chiffon at her hip had not yet arrived; a second from now the red fronds hanging above her head will swing back into her hair. Txema Yeste has caught the interval between two gusts, the pause when the garment forgets it is falling. Michelle stands in a nighttime wood, one hand loose at her thigh, her face turned from whatever the light is doing to her. The light is doing a great deal. It pours across her front like spilled wine while the bare trees behind her burn a cold electric blue.
The picture runs on this quarrel of temperatures. Warmth arrives from the left, staining the sheer robe, the lace hem, the cameo pendant resting between her breasts; the cold stays back among the branches, unimpressed. It is a strange erotics, the body half-shown through pink gauze, the jewelled choker climbing the throat, and yet the mood is closer to sleepwalking than seduction. She could be a figure from a ballad who wandered out of the house in her nightclothes and does not remember why. Nothing here is still; the fabric keeps arguing with the air.
Yeste made his name in the front rank of Spanish fashion photography, in Numéro, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, and the elemental streak that runs through that work, fire and water and wind-blown cloth, is present here. What lingers is the refusal to resolve. The archival pigment print holds the red at full saturation without letting it curdle, so the blue keeps its distance and the woman keeps her secret. You leave before she turns back.
A second ago the wind that lifts the chiffon at her hip had not yet arrived; a second from now the red fronds hanging above her head will swing back into her hair. Txema Yeste has caught the interval between two gusts, the pause when the garment forgets it is falling. Michelle stands in a nighttime wood, one hand loose at her thigh, her face turned from whatever the light is doing to her. The light is doing a great deal. It pours across her front like spilled wine while the bare trees behind her burn a cold electric blue.
The picture runs on this quarrel of temperatures. Warmth arrives from the left, staining the sheer robe, the lace hem, the cameo pendant resting between her breasts; the cold stays back among the branches, unimpressed. It is a strange erotics, the body half-shown through pink gauze, the jewelled choker climbing the throat, and yet the mood is closer to sleepwalking than seduction. She could be a figure from a ballad who wandered out of the house in her nightclothes and does not remember why. Nothing here is still; the fabric keeps arguing with the air.
Yeste made his name in the front rank of Spanish fashion photography, in Numéro, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, and the elemental streak that runs through that work, fire and water and wind-blown cloth, is present here. What lingers is the refusal to resolve. The archival pigment print holds the red at full saturation without letting it curdle, so the blue keeps its distance and the woman keeps her secret. You leave before she turns back.