CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/16/2014

Carlo Mollino: Polaroids

"Created entirely surreptitiously, and perhaps intended by the artist as a kind of final offering that might solve the riddles to understanding his life's work after death, the Polaroid nudes are tinged by a frisson of carnal abandon and impending climax and release. Fetishistic in their exacting detail to each provocative pose, mise-en-scène and material surfaces, and often explicitly revealing the sitters' sex, Mollino's Polaroid nudes are highly directed pictures in which nothing was left to chance… Mollino first had identified each of these nubile creatures as viable subjects. Girls from the streets of Turin, some of them professionals, friends, models, possible mistresses and women that randomly crossed Mollino's path were enlisted to collaborate in the production of these images in which the subjects are often semi-clad wearing the shoes, jewelry and fashion selected for them by Mollino and often posed with Mollino's radical furniture designs and the sensual accoutrement of his architectural and interior worlds. " Featured image and excerpt from James Crump's introductory text are reproduced from Carlo Mollino: Polaroids, the must-have book of vintage nude photography from Damiani/Crump.