« You are a beautiful autumn sky, clear and pink!
But sadness rises within me like the sea,
And leaves, as it recedes upon my morose lips
The burning memory of its bitter silt.
Your hand glides in vain upon my swooning breast;
What it seeks, friend, is a place ravaged
By the claw and ferocious tooth of woman.
Seek my heart no more; the beasts have devoured it.
My heart is a palace withered by the throng;
There, they get drunk, they kill, they tear at each other’s hair!
A perfume swims around your bare throat!…
O Beauty, harsh scourge of souls, you will it!
With your fiery eyes, shining like festivals,
Scorch these tatters spared by the beasts! » (Charles Baudelaire)
Costică Acsinte
Costică Acsinte. Woman holding a cigarette 1930s
Anton Bruehl
Anton Bruehl. Harlem number, Versailles cafe 1943
Jacqueline Rau
Jacqueline Rau. Diana the huntress 1926
Noël Teulon-Porter
Noël Teulon-Porter. Untitled 1930s
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz. Georgia O’Keeffe silhouette 1916
Anna Karina
The actress Anna Karina in Alphaville directed by Jean-Luc Godard in 1965.
Florbela Espanca
« In the divine shamelessness of youth,
In the pagan ecstasy that conquers fate,
In a vibrant trembling of impatience,
I offer you my body, promised to death!
This shadow between lie and truth…
This cloud carried by a north wind…
My body! I carry within it such potent wine:
My kisses of darkness and voluptuousness!
I hold red dahlias on my breast…
Like the fingers of the sun when I embrace you, Plunged into your heart like lances!
And the delicate arabesques of my body
Envelop you in Dantean circles
Feline, in sensual dances. » (Florbela Espanca)
DantéBéa
« We are no longer accomplices. The child is betrayed. The scent no longer sings. From our souls, just silent odors remain. » (DantéBéa)
Man ray
Man Ray. Tearful woman 1935. Hand-colored photography
Henri de Régnier
« No fragrance is sweeter than that of a rose
When one remembers having breathed it in
Or when the ardent bottle, where its soul is enclosed,
Preserves in crystal the captured aroma.
That is why, if ever with fever and delight
I felt your body thrust into my arms
After having long suffered the bitter torment
Of my secret desire that you did not know,
If, by turns, silent, urgent, humble, fierce,
Prowling around you in the shadows, suddenly,
I finally plucked the flower from your lips,
O you, my dear pleasure who were my torment.
If I have known through you the unparalleled intoxication
Whose voluptuous or tender fury
Mysteriously reborn and awakens
Each time my heart beats against yours,
However, neither the close caress, nor the embrace
Nor the double kiss that Desire makes things short
Two beautiful eyes whose flame is extinguished are worthless
In that divine rest one tastes after love!. « (Henri de Régnier)
Philip Pullman
« I will always love you, no matter what. Until my death, and after my death, and when I leave the land of the dead, I will wander endlessly, my atoms will drift, until I find you again. » (Philip Pullman)
« It is within the limits of denial that belief begins. »(DantéBéa)
Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly
“Passions do less harm than boredom, because passions always tend to diminish, while boredom always tends to increase.” (Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly)
Unknown photographer
Unknown photographer. Seated nude 1926
Unknown photographer
Unknown photographer. Back view of a reclining woman 1926.
Hugo Erfurth
Hugo Erfurth. Nude study 1903
Alfred Schneider
Alfred Schneider. Seated woman 1904.
Curtis Moffatt
Curtis Moffatt. Woman refreshing under fountain 1925.
Man Ray
Man Ray. Dancer accompanies herself with her Shadows 1919.
Charles Baudelaire
« I am beautiful, O mortals! Like a dream of stone,
And my breast, where each one has been bruised in turn,
Is made to inspire in the poet a love
Eternal and mute like matter.
I sit enthroned in the azure like a misunderstood sphinx;
I unite a heart of snow with the whiteness of swans;
I hate the movement that displaces lines,
And I never cry and I never laugh.
Poets, before my grand attitudes,
Which I seem to borrow from the proudest monuments,
Will consume their days in austere studies;
For I have, to fascinate these docile lovers,
Pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful:
My eyes, my wide eyes with eternal clarity! » (Charles Baudelaire)
Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele. Reclining woman wearing stripped stockings 1911.
Nikolai Ivanovich Svishtov
Nikolai Ivanovich Svishtov. Women embracing 1920s
Man Ray
Man Ray. Adrienne Fidelin with washboard 1937
Robert Denos
“I have dreamed of you so much, walked, talked, slept with your ghost so much that perhaps all that remains for me, and yet, is to be a ghost among ghosts and a hundred times more shadow than the shadow that walks and will walk happily on the sundial of your life.” (Robert Denos)
Cecil Beaton
Cecil Beaton. Paula Gellibrand, Marquise de Casa Maury 1928.
Cecil Beaton
Cecil Beaton. Paula Gellibrand, Marquise de Casa Maury 1928.
Cecil Beaton
Cecil Beaton. Paula Gellibrand, Marquise de Casa Maury 1928.
Cecil Beaton. Paula Gellibrand, Marquise de Casa Maury 1928.
Cecil Beaton. Paula Gellibrand, Marquise de Casa Maury 1928.
Charles Cros
« I am a butterfly fleeing from crazy things,
And it is in a supreme kiss that I die. » (Charles Cros)
Edith Södergran
« Don’t get too close to your dreams:
They are smoke that can disperse
They are dangerous and can remain.
Have you looked your dreams in the eyes:
They are sick and understand nothing
They only have their own thoughts. Don’t get too close to your dreams:
They are lies, they should go away
They are madness for those who want to stay. » (Edith Södergran)
Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele. Woman reclining on a pillow 1910
Man Ray
Man Ray. Dora Maar 1936
Man Ray. Dora Maar 1936
Man Ray. Dora Maar 1936
Pierre-Louis Pierson
Pierre-Louis Pierson. Comtesse de Castiglione 1860s
Pierre-Louis Pierson. Comtesse de Castiglione 1860s.
Born into the Italian aristocracy, the Countess of Castiglione experienced the hustle and bustle of imperial festivities and the splendor of the Tuileries court, where she was, for a few seasons, one of the most dazzling and boisterous meteors.
Halfway between the world of aristocracy and that of gallantry, she was both idolized and reviled, a socialite and a recluse, the object of all eyes and the secret photographer of her life.
Like in a fairy tale, Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione, arrived in Paris on Christmas Eve 1855, at just 18 years old.
She left behind the court of Turin and a rather conventional milieu for a cosmopolitan Paris, the capital of fashion and pleasure. On the instructions of her cousin Camillo Cavour, minister to the King of Piedmont, Victor Emmanuel, she was sent to plead the cause of Italian unity with Napoleon III, who was sensitive to the eloquence of feminine charms. Keeping in mind the letter Cavour had sent her: « Succeed, my cousin, by whatever means you please, but succeed, » she was ready to launch herself into the glittering whirlwind of the Second Empire.
« Anchor is not thrown at the foot of the cradle, it rises, sails, feeds, explores as the ship following the murmur of its scent pushing it towards the perfume of its soul…The shore is found at the real birth. » (DantéBéa)
Vassily Kandinsky
Vassily Kandinsky. Circle and square 1943
Ernest Cormier
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe or Cecile Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1923
Man Ray
Man Ray. The French Cancan dancer Lydia 1932
Man Ray. The French Cancan dancer Lydia 1932
Man Ray. The French Cancan dancer Lydia 1932
Herbert Matter
Herbert Matter. Mercedes Matter, multiple exposures 1938
Ernest Cormier
Ernest Cormier. Cecile Perron holding a cigarette 1920-1935
Ernest Cormier. Cecile Perron holding a cigarette 1920-1935
Ernest Cormier
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1920-1935
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1920-1935
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1920-1935
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1920-1935
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1920-1935
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1920-1935
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1920-1935
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1920-1935
Zionist boat people
Time to give back Palestine to Palestinians! The Jewish refugees should have been grateful and humble for the welcome!
The territories occupied by the Zionists must be denuclearized
Following World War II, many Holocaust survivors sought to emigrate clandestinely from Europe to Palestine, then under British rule. The British restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine to avoid tensions with the Arab population.
Ernest Cormier
Ernest Cormier. Cecile Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1925
Ernest Cormier. Cecile Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1925
Ernest Cormier. Cecile Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1925
Ernest Cormier. Cecile Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1925
Ernest Cormier. Cecile Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1925
Ernest Cormier. Cecile Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1925
Ernest Cormier
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe and Cecile Perron 1920-1930
Ernest Cormier
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1923
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1923
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1923
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1923
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1923
Ernest Cormier
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe or Cecile Perron 1920-1940
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe or Cecile Perron 1920-1940
Ernest Cormier
Ernest Cormier. Cecile Perron in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1925
Ernest Cormier. Cecile Perron in Ernest Cormier’s workshop 1925
Ernest Cormier
Ernest Cormier. Portrait of Clorinthe Perron 1922-1940
Ernest Cormier. Portrait of Clorinthe Perron 1922-1940
Ernest Cormier. Portrait of Clorinthe Perron 1922-1940
Anton Bruehl
Anton Bruehl. Fashion photography 1937
Ernest Cormier
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing with a hoop 1923
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing with a hoop 1923
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing with a hoop 1923
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing with a hoop 1923
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing with a hoop 1923
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing with a hoop 1923
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing with a hoop 1923
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing with a hoop 1923
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing with a hoop 1923
Ernest Cormier. Clorinthe Perron posing with a hoop 1923
Koloman Moser
Koloman Moser. Three women 1914
Anton Bruehl
Anton Bruehl. Resting model 1935
Anton Bruehl
Anton Bruehl. Reclining woman holding a cigarette 1930-1940
Wilhelm Tobein
Wilhelm Tobein. Young women in bathing suits, Germany 1928. Autochrome
Louis Lumière
Louis Lumière. Bathers 1910. Autochrome
Carlo Wulz
Marion Wulz. Wanda Wulz in Egyptian costume 1930
Marion Wulz. Wanda Wulz in Egyptian costume 1930
Marion Wulz
Marion Wulz. Portrait of Wanda Wulz in the mirror 1950
Carlo Wulz
Carlo Wulz. Wanda Wulz with fan 1927
Carlo Wulz
Carlo Wulz. Wanda and Marion Wulz with a friend reading 1920
Sabine Remy
Sabine Remy. Heide 2013. Photocollage
Philippe Halsman
Philippe Halsman. Salvador Dali in the fetal position 1942.
Following Dali’s statements about his memories of his prenatal life, Halsman photographed the painter « like an embryo in an egg, » in the fetal position on white sheets. Halsman then retouched the negative to give the illusion of nudity and superimposed the resulting image with a photograph of an egg.
Philippe Halsman
Philippe Halsman. Jean Cocteau, The final touch, New-York 1949
Philippe Halsman’s assignment was to capture on camera what goes on “inside a poet’s mind,” for a three-page photo essay commissioned by LIFE Magazine, coinciding with the US release of Cocteau’s movie The eagle with two heads. No stranger to the caprices of avant-garde artists – in 1941, Halsman began his famous 37-year-long collaboration and friendship with Salvador Dali – the photographer had assembled an idiosyncratic array of props for The Frivolous Prince (a moniker the writer gained in the Bohemian artistic circles he mixed in, and the title of a volume he published at twenty-two), including a live boa constrictor and a dozen trained doves. The dancer Leo Coleman was also part of the entourage, alongside a “girl with a classically beautiful face” and a “classically perfect body”: Enrica Soma, a 19-year-old model and prima ballerina who had appeared on the cover of LIFE herself in 1947, where she was spotted by the filmmaker John Huston. She became his fourth wife in 1950.
Franz Otto Koch
Franz Otto Koch. The dancer Nina Payne in The nightgown dance 1910
Franz Otto Koch
Franz Otto Koch. Woman with long hair 1910
Frank Eugene
Frank Eugene. The cake walk 1900
Emil Otto Hoppé
Emil Otto Hoppé. Eileen Hawthorne 1923
Erwin Blumenfeld
Erwin Blumenfeld. Blurred sitting nude 1944
Sasha (Alexander Stewart)
Sasha (Alexander Stewart). The writer and actress Anita Loos 1931
Sasha (Alexander Stewart)
Sasha (Alexander Stewart). The dancer Tilly Losch with the shadow of Roman Jasinski in « L’errante », choreography by George Balanchine, dress by Molyneux 1933
George Sand
« The perfume of the soul is memory. It is the most delicate, the sweetest part of the heart, which detaches itself to embrace another heart and follow it everywhere. The affection of an absent one is nothing more than a perfume. But how sweet and sweet it is, how it brings to the dejected and sick spirit, beneficial images and dear hopes. Do not fear, O you who have left this fragrant trace on my path, never fear that I will let it be lost. I will hold it in my silent heart, like a subtle essence in a sealed bottle. No one will breathe it but me, and I will bring it to my lips in my days of distress, to draw from it consolation and strength, dreams of the past, oblivion of the present. »(George Sand)
Koloman Moser
Koloman Moser. Postcard printed on cardboard 1898
Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt. Romeo, study for the Burgtheater 1887
Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt. Sleeping woman and hands study 1886
Man Ray
Man Ray. The actress Rose Wheeler 1930
Man Ray
Man Ray. The French Cancan dancer Lydia and model 1932
Man Ray. The French Cancan dancer Lydia and model 1932
Man Ray. The French Cancan dancer Lydia and model 1932
Man Ray. The French Cancan dancer Lydia and model 1932
Man Ray
Man Ray. Solarized portrait of the actress Rose Wheeler 1930
Man Ray
Man Ray. The actress Rose Wheeler with a tchador 1930
Man Ray. The actress Rose Wheeler with a tchador 1930
Aurel Bauh
Aurel Bauh. Photogram 1931
Aurel Bauh
Aurel Bauh. Vision 1930
Alfred Cheney Johnston
Alfred Cheney Johnston. The silent movie star Martha Mansfield 1923
Madame d’Ora
Madame d’Ora. The bowl by the Bodenwieser’s school of dance 1931
Man Ray
Man Ray. Fashion photography, unknown model 1925
Man Ray
Man Ray. Triple portrait of the actress Rose Wheeler 1926
Man Ray. Triple portrait of the actress Rose Wheeler 1926
Man Ray
Man Ray. From the serie Fashion in the Congo 1937
Man Ray. From the serie Fashion in the Congo 1937
Man Ray. From the serie Fashion in the Congo 1937
Man Ray. From the serie Fashion in the Congo 1937
Man Ray. From the serie Fashion in the Congo 1937
Man Ray
Man Ray. The dancer Valeska Gert 1925
Man Ray. The dancer Valeska Gert 1925
Man Ray. The dancer Valeska Gert 1925
Man Ray. The dancer Valeska Gert 1925
Lucien Walery
Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, known as Grietje Zelle, also known as Mata Hari, was a Dutch dancer and courtesan, born on 7 August 1876 in Leeuwarden and executed on 15 October 1917 in Vincennes. She was shot for espionage during the First World War.
Lucien Walery. Mata Hari performing the Dance of the seven veils 1906.
Lucien Walery. Mata Hari performing the Dance of the seven veils 1906.
Charles Baudelaire
« It sometimes seems to me that my blood flows in torrents,
Like a fountain with rhythmic sobs.
I hear it flowing with a long murmur,
But I feel in vain to find the wound.
Through the city, as through an enclosed field,
It goes, transforming the cobblestones into islands,
Quenching the thirst of every creature,
And everywhere coloring nature red.
I have often asked captious wines
To lull for a day the terror that undermines me;
Wine makes the eye clearer and the ear sharper!
I have sought in love a forgetful sleep;
But love is for me only a mattress of needles
Made to give drink to these cruel girls! » (Charles Baudelaire)
Brassaï
Brassaï. Publicity photo shooting for Diana Slip 1933
Alvin Langdon Coburn
Alvin Langdon Coburn. Elsie Thomas in an Eastern costume sitting on a hammock 1908. Autochrome
Alvin Langdon Coburn
Alvin Langdon Coburn. Woman wearing a kimono holding a sunflower 1908. Autochrome
Alvin Langdon Coburn
Alvin Langdon Coburn. The dancer Michio Ito 1913.
Michio Itō (April 13, 1893 – November 6, 1961) was a Japanese dancer and choreographer; he worked in association with William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Angna Enters, Isamu Noguchi, Louis Horst, Ted Shawn, Martha Graham, Lillian Powell, Vladimir Rosing, Pauline Koner, Lester Horton, and other American artists. He was interned as a Japanese American and eventually deported from the United States after the outbreak of World War II.
Vassily Kandinsky
Vassily Kandinsky. Little white 1928
Lehnert and Landrock
Lehnert and Landrock. Oriantalist nude 1900-1910
Anaïs Nin
« The enemy of love is never outside, it is not this man or that woman, it is what we lack inside. » (Anaïs Nin)
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden. Reclining woman 1895
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden. Reclining woman 1895
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden. Nude study in outdoor 1895
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden. Nude study in outdoor 1895
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden. Nude study in outdoor 1895
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden. Nude study 1895
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden. Nude study in outdoor 1895
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden. Nude study in outdoor 1895
Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden. Nude study in outdoor 1895
DantéBéa 