Lamp Girl

source: dezeen

French photographer and stylist Marianne Maric has sent us these photographs of girls dressed as lamps.

Maric exhibited a video performance of the lamp girls as part of an exhibition called Under my Skin at Galerie Magda Danysz in Paris earlier this year.

Update 19/07/08: Yatzer has pointed out that he ran this story first. Which we’re not disputing.

The following text is from Maric:

I started photography in 2001, and I’ve been constantly taking pictures of my girl friends and mates. My work shifted gradually from shooting them in sophisticated outdoor settings toward a more tridimensional, sculptural approach to the female body.

First, I used photography as a way to freeze time ; my friends were losing their identities, with their faces hidden most of the time. They were looking like dislocated dolls, broken toys or sad robots. My mind has now become a sanctuary where these objectified bodies give some of their life back. I imagine them moving slightly, in a sweet, smooth and shy movement. I need to be in full control, to master those objects I have created. Whereas I initially wanted to freeze these living girls, I am now trying to bring to life my motionless creatures again, even to the point where they could possibly free themselves of my bonds.

I see the world as an endless setting I’m trying to comprehend. I see the human body the same way ; William Klein perceived it as a wonderful and fascinating architecture worthy of being photographed. I used to be afraid of puting life into my pictures and I was destroying them with the tip of my finger. Today though, when I transform a woman into a thing, it always serves the same purpose: allowing me to shape her/it as the subject/object I want her/it to be.

These “lamp-girls” were first conceived as an illustration of the woman as a thing conveyed by the “entertainment world,” but gradually ascending to a state of consciousness. These photographs were part of a broader vision: once the costume was finished, the “living” model put it on and took place on a white rotating base into a dark room. The public had the choice to turn on or off the lamp, the dress, the girl, the room. I wanted to “immortalize” this moment when a woman become a simple household appliance. That is how these photographs were born.