Abstract: If I were to sum up Fiona Pardington's photographs in one word, I would say quite simply that they are sexy. This may seem a strange and rather colloquial word for an art historian to use to describe an artist's work, but how else to register a kind of appeal or address to the viewer that is at once visceral, deeply sensual, stirring and enlivening? I am not talking here solely of Pardington's works that both inhabit and reinvent the erotic domain: her intimate portraits, self portraits, images of bodies and parts of bodies, nude, clothed or emerging from drapery. Rather, I want to suggest that her oeuvre in general triggers the quickening of the heart brought about by attraction and attachment. Freud called this drive for pleasure, which also forges stable bonds, Eros. Pardington, then, is a photographer of Eros in this way.
Publication Year: 2016
Publication Date: 2016-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
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