Painted Ladies

Painted Ladies by Valerie Belin. First edition. First impression in new condition. No markings. This is a new book. Signed and numbered by Valerie Belin to rear endpage (one of 600 copies). Comes in a slipcase. Please see pictures. PayPal accepted, any questions please get in touch.

About Painted Ladies

So, this series consists of eight large format black and white photographs of agency models. Chosen as the basis, the raw material for the laboratory process that followed. Each picture is named after a brush used to paint and apply the make up, and also after the equivalent digital retouching tools found in image processing software. Brushes and pigments applied the make up in the spirit of tribal painting, or in a kind of initiatory rite. The models’ faces are simply supports here. Reduced to mere surface. The pose is neutral and the gaze absent, as if trained on the woman’s own inner life. The expression is exteriorised only by the paint, which is imposed on the model, its passive recipient. Each portrait has its own pictorial style, which differs from one model to another. It is then placed against a digital ground that repeats the pictorial motif of the face. Sometimes overlapping, this ground also adds to the abstraction of an image whose only depth is on the inside.

Related Links

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