Torsten Köster

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Don't take me wrong but this is a huge problem! Whom to give credit at, the photographer or the mannequin's "sculptor"? It is the same false dilemma when it comes in photographing other's "art". 

Photographing graffiti, combining ads with real people, recording on photograph some installations, are all these meta-art?

It took me many "visualisations" before I accept that this is a lifeless plastic.

Of course the keen eye will see immediately the broken finger, but this is not how I read images. I start small, abstract, then I close my eyes and try to remember it, before I go into the detail of a full blown size.

Nevertheless, even if the artificial girl is superbly conceived and implemented (probably in a chain production unit), we cannot fail to admire both the decorator's and the photographer's sensibility in delivering such a symbolic image (the woman-doll in a fetich posture) squinting her eyes enough as to disconnect from a rather obscure and competing (Monroe in the background) reality.

Geometry and expressive contrast dominate the rest of the frame but no second level is of any importance when the main subject is so powerful.

Perspective is the key element here and the angle, the vantage point is all that the photographer has in their hands.

"The photographer cannot, like Turner, whisk an invisible town around a hill, and bring it into view, and add a tower or two to a palatial building, or shave off a mountain's scalp ... He must take what he sees, just as he sees it, and his only liberty is the selection of a point of view." H. J. Morton "The Philadelphia Photographer - An Illustrated monthly journal, devoted to photography - The official organ of the National Photographic Association of the United States" - no.8 - 1865

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