“This led to Löyly, a Finnish term for the steam that rises from icy water when poured
onto burning stones, passing from a liquid to a gaseous state. But the term also means
ghosts – a taste of things to come – as I will explain…
Dorothée Smith never stages scenes or tells her friends and models how to pose:
with her modesty and discretion, most of them don’t even realize they’ve been
photographed. In the Löyly series, we see a dark rock rising up and blending into the
sky, undeniably bringing romantic painting to mind, along with a menacing tornadolike
double cloud and chilly frozen landscapes. But also many young people seen from
behind, often with tattooed bodies, daydreaming or withdrawn – somewhere else; a
very pale young man with glacier eyes and raven-black hair, like a recurring apparition
in the series, and the sublime face of an androgyne with a dreamy, melancholic look,
lost in an inner world, with a half-closed expression and a sensual mouth open for a
word or a kiss that won’t come. Tired and deliciously morbid, or rather morbido (soft,
gentle) since the Italian terms seems more fitting, the androyne delicately rests a
beautiful ephebian head on a velvet cushion with one arm tucked under, offered and
already withdrawn, disappearing like a fleeting, desirable apparition.”
Extract text Dominique Baqué
Coproducer
Pavillon Vendôme, Clichy - The Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki - Galerie Les filles du calvaire - Olympus France
Released
14/11/2013
Collection
Hors Collection
Format
215 x 290
Anglais/Français
Relié couverture cartonnée
125 photos colors and Blanck and white
192 pages
ISBN : 978-2-35046-296-7
Press review
A limited edition of 30 copies is available, each including a signed and numbered 18 x 24 cm original print.
  • Löyly
    Photo #1
  • Löyly
    Photo #2
  • Löyly
    Photo #3
  • Löyly
    Photo #4
  • Löyly
    Photo #5
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Smith

Artiste, Photographe

Born in 1985, SMITH is a photographer, filmmaker, visual artist and doctoral student in aesthetics. His indisciplinary work is understood as an observation of constructions, deconstructions, relocations and moults of human identity. Through the hybridization of techniques, mediums, the use of new technologies and numerous collaborations with scientists and philosophers, SMITH develops a poetics of metamorphosis. Exploring in particular the transgender figures of the ghost, the fantasy and the post-traumatic transformation, SMITH gives body to processes of subjectivation which act hollow or negative, with the same effacement, the alteration or the injury of the identity . His works invite immersion in an aesthetic of the auratic image, conducive to contemplation or daydreaming. His work has led to solo exhibitions at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles (2012 and 2015), at the Helsinki Photography Museum (2015), at the Filles du Calvaire gallery (2012, 2016) and also at in many festivals, museums, galleries and art centers in Europe, North and Latin America, and Asia. His work is represented by the gallery Les Filles du Calvaire and Specter Productions.