Prostitution of Architecture

Carlo Mollino was originally known as a designer and architect, but after his death, a drawer full of Polaroid pictures of Turinese prostitutes was found in his home. Mollino would dress them up and carefully pose them. Some images appear to be innocent and flaws are blurred and disguised beneath the clothes. Other images, on the other hand, are very provocative and show the bruised legs and dimpled flesh of the prostitutes.

I have applied the style, technique, and composition of Mollino's photography to my own architectural photos.
With the first set of images, Mollino uses soft lighting and a blurred image to hide the flaws of the prostitute. He dresses her in more conservative clothing in comparison to others, and the white of the shirt and the way she is posed suggests innocence. I tried to recreate this affect by disguising the flaws of an older building by dulling the colors and blurring the image. I also placed a spotlight on the vertical building as Mollino has done with his image of the girl standing vertically in the center of the photo.

In the second set of images, Mollino tones down the provocative photo by using grayscale and blurring the image. While the prostitute is posed in an aggressive way, she is dressed more innocently. With my image of a building, I also used grayscale and blurring to hide its flaws. With the composition, the building fills up the majority of the photo, and it is slightly facing toward the right. Also, the top of the image is more washed out, while the bottom contains three dark rectangles that draw the eye toward that area.

The final set of images are the more flawed of the three. Mollino porteys a much more vivid pitcture of a prostitute in this image. The darkness around the face suggests a lack of innocence, and the light fabric around her body increases the contrast. I also left the flaws visible in my photo of the building. There is a highlight on the building just as the light fabric highlights the prostitute.