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Sensual smut
Polaroids presents the never-before-seen collection of Carlo Mollino, a cultured Italian amateur photographer of independent wealth who amused himself in the latter years of his life creating erotic tableaux featuring local women and prostitutes. Previously, only a handful of the pictures have been seen in public, reportedly fetching large sums at auction, otherwise remaining as obscure an enigma as Mollino himself. Shot between 1960 and 1973 at the fabled two-storey Casa Mollino villa in Turin – bought expressly for the production of his private sexual dramas – the pictures’ beguiling charm lies beyond their period kitsch. What raises his voyeuristic fantasies above routine amateur pornography is his obsessive attention to detail and the charged interaction between photographer and model. Mollino took precise control over all aspects of the picture, sourcing everything from clothing and fine lingerie to the cloth backdrops and sometimes elegant furniture. The sets are often spartan and the poses as manneristic as any high street photographer, yet his artful staging and the intense, playful voyeurism pervades every image.
Carlo Mollino Polaroids is published by Arena Editions, priced £36.50, ISBN 1-892041-60-X.
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