It really irks me how often women* in ‘artsy’ photography, especially in art-erotica and high fashion photography, look and pose like corpses. I am by no means the first to point this out, but I was reminded of the issue when I stumbled upon this Helmut Newton image. It could be a really great, really interesting, really erotic photo, if only the woman* didn’t look like she fell out of a window naked.
Death is the ultimate passivity, dead bodies are void of any agency. That is probably titillating for some, but these kinds of shootings, settings, poses occur so often that they are part of a systemic misogyny rather than mere personal aesthetics.
Thoughts?