to porcelain, to ivory, to steel

Zhao Bandi  |  赵半狄  -  Letter from Far Away,  ca. 1980 

Chinese, b. 1966 

‘Evermore’ album by Taylor Swift Emily Dickinson in Apple TV+ ‘Dickinson’

more gay cinema + Rückenfigur [see part 1 here]

The term Rückenfigur (“figure from the back”) comes from the 19th-century German Romanticism movement. Popularized by artists such as Caspar David Friedrich, it describes paintings in which a figure is portrayed with their back toward the viewer, allowing the viewer to vicariously experience the figure’s perspective of the beholden scene and their emotional state. Despite concealing the face of the person portrayed, this form of portraiture is prevalent in contemporary paintings, film, photography, and even popular culture. Rückenfigur works ultimately achieve a paradoxical effect: while the subject’s pose invites the viewer into the scene, their turned back often communicates a mood of isolation or melancholy.

folklore parallels: 7/?