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</div><div style="text-align:justify" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1478177105926_9243"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-GB" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1478177105926_9244" lang="EN-GB">Hello Empyreans. Very much enjoying the
discussion. I would agree that there is a (possibly offensive) Times Square ante-Disney aspect to Peter Valente’s photos
as presented here. Maybe I should also say as received on my computer, for I’m
not sure I got the best quality download. But just briefly if I may on three of
the pictures: I found myself concentrating on the fragmenting choices, maybe
because of the overlapping yellow rectangle at the bottom of Picture 1, where a
young woman smiles tentatively in the direction of the viewer. There would
definitely seem to be a kind of peekaboo aspect here, where not only the
pectoral region but the top of the woman’s head is cropped out. It is like a
perverse symmetry, prohibiting access to brain and breast. But then (unless my
machine has merged two images) we see the yellow-and-violet rectangle,
apparently lying beneath the image of the woman. In terms Roland Barthes used
in *Camera Lucida* the studium in this photo is a young woman in ambiguous
surroundings whereas the punctum is the additionally ambiguous image partly
covered by the main one. As I say, my computer may have superimposed two shots,
but even so, there is this element of you-can’t-see-all. The other two
photographs I wanted to mention are both in black and white. Photo 12, the
penultimate (in my download) interests me because of the composition, the
particular position of the figure within the rectangular whole of the photo.
Here we have the whole upper body of the woman, and we are in fact drawn to the
face by the diagonals formed by legs and arms. Somewhat ironically given what I
said about Photo 1, in
12 we also find a second rectangle that could be the bottom of a second photo
or, perhaps more likely, a window casing or a mirror. But this time the second
rectangle is at the upper left, interpretable as offsetting or counterbalancing
the cropping out of the woman’s pubic area and her buttocks. Again there is
ambiguity: Is she lying back in anticipation? Is she on the point of standing
up? Could she have been pushed so that she fell back onto the couch? This
perhaps is the particular fragmentation in this particular photograph. Finally
in Photo 5 the figure, a smiling young woman is seen in a frontal view from
almost the top of her head to just above the pubis. Thus again the cropping,
the fragmentation. Her hands and forearms are out of view above her head. The
figure is framed by what might be door or window casements, somehow emphasizing
(to my eye) the upright position of the figure, apparently in a stretching
position that we can only assume is a kind of full corporal exposure. But again
we are shown only part(s). Looking forward to more. Thanks of course to Peter
Valente for the photos & ideas. Best wishes, William</span></div>
<div style="text-align:justify" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1478177105926_9245"><<a href="http://tinyurl.com/pkemmhk" target="_blank" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1478177105926_9246"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-GB" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1478177105926_9247" lang="EN-GB">http://tinyurl.com/pkemmhk</span></a>> </div>
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