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Bram Stoker’s Chair series by Sam Taylor-Wood

Sam Taylor-Wood is a UK based celebrity photographer and cineast who made this extraordinary series of sexy lady photographs without any nudity. An excellent example of my Chairchez La Femme category. Note the absence of a shadow from the chair.

And note:

Women artists have invented new ways of representing the body, going against the grain of accepted representational standards in taking on the human figure. Professor Linda Nochlin, New York University Institute of Fine Arts, examines certain women painters, photographers, sculptors, performers and video artists who have worked with the body and made it new, and critically analyses their revisions of a long, male-dominated tradition. Geological Society Lecture Theatre, Piccadilly, W1; 6.30–7.30pm

via Luce Annual Lecture – Evening talks – Exhibitions & events – Royal Academy of Arts.

And Note:

Taylor-Wood’s series Bram Stoker’s Chair is so-called because the chair in question, which magically supports her contortions in each photograph, casts no shadow, like Dracula himself. However, the idea of female sexuality liberated from the constraints of Victorian society is relevant when we consider how these images have been constructed and choreographed. For both the Bram Stoker’s Chair and Self Portrait Suspended series, Taylor-Wood was trussed up by a bondage expert in constrictive harnesses and hung from wires attached to the ceiling for hours on end while performing her poses. The final images of seemingly effortless acrobatics were heavily doctored using computer manipulation, releasing her body from the bondage and supporting cables to float freely in mid-air. The female artist then, is claiming full control over her self-image, counteracting the traditionally male gaze of the camera as well as more perverse experimentations by artists such as Hans Bellmer, who constructed his own life-size doll with limbs that he could manipulate at will, declaring: I shall construct an artificial girl whose anatomy will make it possible to recreate physically the dizzy heights of passion…

Via White Cube