Leichnam - CORPSE


An approach at a subject that has fascinated and rankled me ever since I was confronted with it in literature and art in school and through my mother (devoted art&literature- teacher):The Beauty of Dead and Suffering Women throughout the whole history of art, literature. It has been there like forever. The aesthetics of a suffering, pale, weak, helpless, dead, unconcious, dreaming, sleeping, tortured, hurting or wasting woman has been (especially in the Western Culture) almost permanentely present. Especially idealized and excessively lived out during Romanticism, Neo-Romanticism, current Manga/Anime-genre and the obvious Gothic as well as Fetish area. It has fascinated man(!) since day one and has been approached in millions of "beautiful" as well as disgusting and shocking, humiliating ways.
Famous for example the Ophelia theme. The drowned woman is one of the most intense and twisted aesthetical, erotic themes of an idealized Beauty. Not to forget the many suffering women in mythology and the images of dying or humiliated, tortured women in literature and art in Christianity. (Also Jesus as a suffering beauty, an object of desire and weakness).

noone seems to question let alone NOTICE this common theme of "beauty"; a pale drowning, suffering, dying woman. Aesthetically visualised so often already (famous for example Millais' "Ophelia": »link , »link ) Mentionable is also the witch burning through out Europe as well as Africa, also connected to eroticism, beauty, dangerous women, mysteriousness and suffering. The books are filled with images of different methods to find out if a woman "is a witch" or not, where you feel like brutality could hardly get any worse. The sexuali aspect of death, of beauty, of dying, of suffering women is immense and easily to find in any literature or movie today (from simple things like "KingKong" tor stories like "The Ring" or the "Snuff Films as well as vampire related stories, biblical stories (Maria, Magdallena, the suffering crying women at jesus' cross & grace etc) the list goes on and on.

Long description short conclusion related to the images:
I wanted to capture t hat dichotomy of beauty and erriness, capture the feel of a corpse wrapped in a cloth and capture its "beauty", as well as show the "mass" of that theme, the continuous reappearence in art and literature up until now.
Go through the tv channels, check the movies and look for the erotic/sexual aspect in scenes of murder, kidnapping, strangling, drowning, hunting, humiliating women. You ill find more than you think.

My thoughts.
Not more not less.




Shotdate | -location:
2006 Jan. 14 | Wien (AT)

Camera | Filmtype:
SX-70 Alpha1 | 779
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Uploaded: Feb. 03, 2006
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