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The Staley and Wise Gallery exhibits works from the German photographer Ellen Von Unwerth. This exhibition titled "Fräulein", which means young woman in German, is a collection of photographs showing an ideal erotic image of young beautiful women. The word Fraulein in German has an underneath hand sexual connotation, this is why Von Unwerth chose it to give a provocative sense to its content. In fact, in German "Frau" is used to say woman, and the "-lein" ending of the word Fräulein can then have a pejorative connotation: the one of a woman who loves debauchery or leading the life of a venal woman.
These images are similar to fashion shootings as for covers for Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, or Elle. Generally in black in white, these photographs underline powerful contrasts and express the deep erotic tension of these apparently innocent grown up girls. Black and with mixes intimately and no one can say if black and white symbolizes or virtue or desire.
The photographer stresses this tricky perversity under the fresh looks of her models: what is hidden in reality shows. Von Unwerth plays with this game of hiding and showing as a tease. The photographer creates an expressionist type of artistic vision of women: behind the innocent faces, behind the beauty, and aesthetic perfection of her models, naughty thoughts, sexual hardcore connotations are revealed. For instance the photographer focuses on some of her models dressed in leather outfits, models that embody fetishist desire.
We can think of Nabokov's novel, Lolita, which is about the strong passion and lust of a mature man for the daughter of his mistress. Writers such as Faulkner described characters living emblematic contradiction: the opposition of their social image and their sexual needs that leave them severely distraught.
The influence of Helmut Newton, Sarah Moon and Man Ray are here outstanding in Von Unwerth's works. The way she uses famous top models such as Carla Bruni, Helena Christensen, or actresses such as Nicole Kidman and Vanessa Paradis known as being the actor Johnny Depp's wife, is another way to prove to us the strong charisma, this diva attitude of her beloved Fräulein.
One could say that this vision of women as sexual objects is shocking, but the message of Von Unwerth is different: men are not invited in her world. The artistic world she conveys is the one of women for women, the one of Sapphic pleasures, where women want to stay amongst themselves. Von Unwerth's plays with the ambiguity of the objects and settings: by using lingerie, erotic attitude inspired of heterosexual men schemes on Sapphic love, she wants to make us understand that women can appropriate these codes for themselves.
Aristocrats, artists, young goddesses of beauty, actresses, these women are independent. They are out of control of men, and just images you cannot touch. In many of Von Unwerth's pictures the subject of lesbian love, lesbian desire is represented in intimate settings that remind us of the twenties or cabaret such as a picture taken from the Moulin Rouge played by Nicole Kidman alias Satin, attests. The richness of clothes, of the interiors, the subtle make-up, and the attitude of these young women are a celebration of women's power. Above all Ellen Von Unwerth proves to us that gender does not matter in making photographs: a woman can observe the world with the same eyes as those of a man.
Jack Nall
New York, NY
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