The face of the forlorn and melancholic character is redundant in Phaedra Brody’s work. The photograph Malaparte was taken on the estate of the eponymous villa. A tribute to the film Contempt (Le Mépris) filmed in the same place, the couple represents the modern Camille and Paul. Yesterday’s lovers continue, through habit, to take the same path but are already no longer linked. The woman seems the most detached. Inward looking, she seems vacant. Brody’s feminine figure is a Hitchcock blonde. With an icy beauty, she is unapproachable and trivial, as well as sacred and savage. If not sensual, her sexual dimension is suggested and associated with dangerousness.

**The artist: Phaedra Brody**

Phaedra Brody is an Australian and Scottish photographer. After studying literature at the Sorbonne, she taught herself photography and chose this medium as a means of expression. Accustomed to travelling, she saw the world as a setting. Each landscape inspires a photograph likely to be filled with one of the fictional characters that she invents. Yet these characters almost seem to forget the world surrounding them. Steeped in thought, they evolve within their wider and deeper inner world.Phaedra Brody has forged a particular style, using a blend of traditional and modern photographic techniques to obtain a result close to painting. Her photographs have been published in the international press and exhibited in France and New York.