Dichotomy of beauty

EXHIBITION: WHY IT IS PRESCRIBED AND WHO BENEFITS FROM THAT?

- Hein Kaiser

Ok, so it’s a bit confusing at first. Why would one of South Africa’s best fashion and beauty photographers almost, in a sense, parody her trade?

Photographer and exceptionally talented artist Angie Lazaro has done exactly that in her current exhibition. It’s called Pose/essed and is presently on show at the Merchantec Capital Gallery in Illovo in Johannesburg.

The exhibition, she said, is both an admission, and an act of reflection. It asks why beauty still needs to be prescribed, and who benefits when it is.

"It came from a point of contradiction," she said. "The very images I had created in my life are now the subject of critique for this exhibition.

"It’s about highlighting what the industry does, lives and breathes so that we can look at images it relishes with a more critical eye and not just take them as the accepted norm about what beauty should be."

It makes sense. Lazaro’s work reimagines Aphrodite of Milos as a central motif, connecting classical ideals of beauty to the digital age.