March 29, 2005
The original "cam whore"?
The nineteenth-century Countess de Castiglione was obsessed with capturing her own image in over 400 photographs that recreated significant moments of her life. Like today's "cam whores," she liked to pose for "risqué" shots that revealed a bare foot or thigh.
Was she a true artist or just exceedingly vain? In her old age she lived in an apartment where all mirrors were banished, from which she only ventured out at night. A sad yet curiously modern tale. A few of her photographs can be found here (scroll down to the middle).
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A Countess de Castiglione photobook is available on this Amazon page, but note the limited stock.
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Neat post. And oooooh, what a finely-turned calf...
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Cool post, astroboy! She was lovely, and had a nice sense of theater and play.
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Those pictures in the link behind the fold are fantastic. If you keep scrolling you fall upon some exquisite Cindy Sherman photographs, that obviously bare the mark of the countess. But for all we know she could just as easily been a poseur, the photographer sculpting her presence within the frame, or the very architect of each shot herself. There is a biography by Robert de Montesquiou and I'm wondering if it could shed any light here. Great post!
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there is a biography by Robert de Montesquiou de Montesquiou was the model for des Esseintes in Huysmans' A rebours -- you can bet that if she caught his eye, it was because she was a supreme artificer and an exquisite. More prosaically, from the front page of the exhibition, " This selection of more than ninety photographs, many of which were elaborately painted under her direction[...]"
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Great info, Wolof. Thanks.
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He's also the model for the Baron de Charlus in Proust's In Search of Lost Time. You can see Whistler's portrait of him here, and Proust's review of M's Pays des aromates here.
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Oh, that says 'cam whore.... Never mind.