The power
of the camera to be everywhere and to interrelate things
is well indicated in the Vogue magazine boast (March 15, 1953)
"A woman now, and without having to leave the country, can have the best
of five (or more) nations hanging in
her closet - beautiful and compatible as a statesman's dream". That is why, in the photographic age, fashions
have come to be like the collage style in painting.
The movie stars and matinee idols
are put in the public domain by photography. They become dreams that money can buy. They can be bought and hugged and thumbed |
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more easily than public prostitutes. Mass-produced merchandise has always made some people uneasy
in its prostitute aspect.
Jean Genet's The Balcony is a play
on this theme of society as a brothel environed by violence and horror.
The avid desire of mankind to prostitute itself stands up against the chaos of revolution. The brothel remains firm and permanent amidst the most furious changes. In a word, photography has inspired Genet with the theme of the world since photography as a Brothel-without-Walls. |
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