Picture Post #36 A postcard from Taroudant

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'


Posted by Tessa den Uyl and Martin Cohen

A postcard from Taroudant, Maroc

One piece of advice offered is to lower the gaze, to not allow it to dwell, as if the eye serves distraction.

The woman seated in front of the painting is possibly homeless. Her posture dissolves with the two figures on the wall, characterised by their carved-out eyes, and urge us to imagine where this woman can put her gaze.

Eyes and hearts, their combination invites a myriad of symbolic attributions. One of them is that a woman with her eyes can reach the man in his heart. The carved-out eyes suggest that women, even when veiled, still look (and distract), which they should not... Or is the image saying something quite different, that the time for women to be veiled is consigned to history and that these days we can 'forget about the eyes’?

An eye is connected with light, and light with reflection. The ‘seduction’ begins with the question of where the reflection should pose its attention.

Picture Post #29 Stripping Down the Tailor's Dummy

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'


Posted by Tessa den Uyl and Martin Cohen

A Shop Window in Florence, Italy, September 2017. Picture credit: Antonio Borrani

      

We can all wonder what we will do next. What to invent to keep on going while deadlines mark pressure on time schedules. And even when we have no idea what to talk about or to show, surely with something we have to come up. This is a crazy world, more bound to production than quality, and even when we have nothing to tell, we will fill the page, when we have nothing to sell, we fill the shop window. With (non)sense?

The image above shows a ‘flying’ woman in a, perhaps, rather dubious position. Her legs are revealed, which assuredly does exalt her shoes that anew lead up to her legs and higher up to her bottom without underpants. Of-course the woman is a tailor’s dummy, not a real woman. Still, the shoes and her dress are made for real, living woman. In short: what does this puppet represent?

The female figure seems to shape a larger social imagery than we are used to seeing explored for the male. Erotically the female body seems much more consumed for commercial purposes. Imagery is a driving force in many plays, to start with the daily role-play we dress up when we wake.

Something must attract the consumer.

One purse and one shoe exposed for sale, two glass frames containing sand that can be turned around. Like the image of a woman? Or is this a representation of sand dunes? The time? A woman suspended or, perhaps better to say,  a woman pending, in the air.

This, is the fashion to follow.

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