Am I the only one who thinks there is something about the sheen on the fabric of the dress the women is wearing in this scene (left) that somehow makes it ‘work’ despite so much else being so ‘wrong’ about it? I mean… sure, the nappy’s ok as far as it goes, but all that jewellery and make up on the girl? And the background is just horrid, in my opinion, even in a domestic setup. Even in a fairly modest home I would have thought it possible to set aside a small box room (as we’d call it here in the UK), kit it out in an appropriate manner – obviously depending on one’s taste but, security always being paramount, surely with bars on the window and a sturdy lock on the door as a bare minimum requirement. I don’t know about you but I just think all those toys lying around in the background aren’t just a distraction, they also threaten to send the wrong message… Wow! What a rant – sorry! That wasn’t the route I’d intended to take at all – it was all supposed to be about the role of woman’s dress in setting the scene and providing so much of the atmosphere.
That ‘sheen’ I have been enthusing about is probably just an artefact produced by the over zealous use of camera flash, but I don’t want to think about that too deeply coz it still ‘does it’ for me. Somehow it changes everything. How about you? What is it about it, if anything at all?
Actually, in my humble opinion, such ‘problems’ as I outline above are pretty rare in pictures originating from the same source (www.nrs.helena.com Don’t bother following it coz sadly it no longer exists). The web address refers to Nurse Helena and try as I might I can’t find an extant source. I don’t know who was behind them or where they’ve gone, I just know there is an entire cannon of medical fetish photographic work out there in Web-land labelled with the same defunked web address and all of it (well most of what I’ve seen thus far) highly atmospheric, highly imaginative, to the point of practically telling a story in one shot!
Take the example on the right for instance (this one is labelled www.ab-dl-production.combut it’s from the same source, trust me, I’m an expert, I can recognise the style etc - and this address doesn’t seem to exist either). Study it for a while, give your imagination free rein and… Hey! Look at that! Yeah I know it could have come out of one of my novels, but that’s lazy – let your own creative juices have a go. Now check out all those Tumblr blogs for more (though you wont have to much longer coz I plan to gather them all together in one place in The Original Institute website before long).
Actually I really hate the face mask thing, but look at the body language, the way the girl’s head is hanging, the listless way her arms hang by her sides…