Triptychs

Behind each of the triptychs of Tom Spianti, we see twirling antics of the same woman-child. Sometimes a princess returning from the ball, sometimes dreamy and drowsy, she never seems to be conscious of the lustful gaze in her direction. Revealing her nubile, fetishized body— either feet wrapped in small ballet slippers, or round and allusive thighs— the eternally candid woman seems to play like Aphrodite while dreaming of being Mary.

But beyond the multiple elusions of her modesty hides the same gentle look – that of the photographer. Present without being there, in the moments he captures he tames the hysteria of the body-fantasy and turns it into tender banter. We not only see the woman who is shown here, but also the femininity that is exposed as she sees herself: naïve, worried, mischievous, or adorable. And so we see, spread out in threes, one photograph after another, the many metamorphoses of her whim.

Oh, Venus—always offered, never promised. Nevertheless, it is necessary that the simplicity of your state is not complete so that the sinful Eve may sleep in you, and gorge herself on a most erotic sap! Innocence does not in itself contain the grace of our subject’s condition. She must, in order to enjoy herself, comply with the friendly eye—the eye that can see within her, without succumbing to all the rest, the possibility of fruit.

Oh, martyr of the photographer ! Mirror of a world composed almost exclusively of women, the entire work of Tom Spianti shows us the hidden side of modern women's quarters. Like a Sultan contemplating photos of his harem when he has none, with him we penetrate a fascinating and secret world, in a utopian Yemen where the Queen of Sabah invites us to join the confines of her Adamic East— where innocence and seduction mix and become fertile.

Frédéric-Charles Baitinger