I came across this photograph in the photography book ‘Acting the Part: Photography as Theatre.’ This constituted of essays by Lori Pauli, Marta Weiss, Ann Thomas and Karen Henry.
Horst P. Horst images can be seen as similar to John Heartfield’s work, because they share similar backgrounds. Horst P. Horst’s photograph was produced in 1939 and John Heartfield’s was produced in 1930. They both originated from Germany and worked with photomontage’s, clearly trying to make a statement with their images, "socialist photographers like Heartfield use photomontage to make invisible social relations visible, advertisers have used montage to conceal 'reality" (Wells, 1997, p.179). Horst photographed costumes for Salvador Dali and created ‘Electric Beauty,’ drawing on surrealistic ideas himself. This photograph (advertising) above shows a portrait of a woman who is undergoing a beauty treatment:
“her face covered by a heat mask with one small breathing hole. Electrical cords snake around her entire body, which she holds an electric nail buffer in one hand and steadies the overhead lamp with the other. One leg is lathered with hair-removing cream while her other foot rests in a tub of soapsuds. The analogy with the figures who animate the backdrop, a detail from Hieronymus Bosch’s painting The Temptation of Saint Anthony, is not all that far-fetched” (Wells, 1997, p.126).
What I interoperated from this photograph was that women feel the need to change themselves in order to find what is seen as ‘beautiful,’ where the woman (in the photograph) looks like she may accidently harm herself in order to achieve beauty. For example being strangled by the electrical cords or being electrocuted. I felt that this image related to my project and photographs because the woman’s face is also covered up and being suffocated by the beauty treatment, where the woman loses her identity. It also portrays the extremities women go to in order to achieve beauty.
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