Italian-born Stefano Giacomini is a photographer who’s fixated by the woman’s body. “I think that the body of a woman is one of the most beautiful things can exist all over the world: a perfect mix with lights and colors!,” he’s said. “I first fell in love with this kind of subject when I admired a Giulio Monteverde’s sculpture.”
Giacomini’s la femme et le chat is a stunning black and white series of a woman and her cat walking along a lovely cobblestone street in Italy. There is a peacefulness about the photos that capture your gaze.
What a sweet and charming set!
Edward Field, 1924
It sometimes happens
that the woman you meet and fall in love with
is of that strange Transylvanian people
with an affinity for cats.
You take her to a restaurant, say, or a show,
on an ordinary date, being attracted
by the glitter in her slitty eyes and her catlike walk,
and afterward of course you take her in your arms,
and she turns into a black panther
and bites you to death.
Or perhaps you are saved in the nick of time,
and she is tormented by the knowledge of her tendency:
that she daren’t hug a man
unless she wants to risk clawing him up.
This puts you both in a difficult position,
panting lovers who are prevented from touching
not by bars but by circumstance:
you have terrible fights and say cruel things,
for having the hots does not give you a sweet temper.
One night you are walking down a dark street
and hear the padpad of a panther following you,
but when you turn around there are only shadows,
or perhaps one shadow too many
You approach, calling, “Who’s there?”
and it leaps on you.
Luckily you have brought along your sword,
and you stab it to death.
And before your eyes it turns into the woman you love,
her breast impaled on your sword,
her mouth dribbling blood saying she loved you
but couldn’t help her tendency.
So death released her from the curse at last,
and you knew from the angelic smile on her dead face
that in spite of a life the devil owned,
love had won, and heaven pardoned her.
Giacomini’s la femme et le chat is a stunning black and white series of a woman and her cat walking along a lovely cobblestone street in Italy. There is a peacefulness about the photos that capture your gaze.
What a sweet and charming set!
Poem
Curse of the Cat WomanEdward Field, 1924
It sometimes happens
that the woman you meet and fall in love with
is of that strange Transylvanian people
with an affinity for cats.
You take her to a restaurant, say, or a show,
on an ordinary date, being attracted
by the glitter in her slitty eyes and her catlike walk,
and afterward of course you take her in your arms,
and she turns into a black panther
and bites you to death.
Or perhaps you are saved in the nick of time,
and she is tormented by the knowledge of her tendency:
that she daren’t hug a man
unless she wants to risk clawing him up.
This puts you both in a difficult position,
panting lovers who are prevented from touching
not by bars but by circumstance:
you have terrible fights and say cruel things,
for having the hots does not give you a sweet temper.
One night you are walking down a dark street
and hear the padpad of a panther following you,
but when you turn around there are only shadows,
or perhaps one shadow too many
You approach, calling, “Who’s there?”
and it leaps on you.
Luckily you have brought along your sword,
and you stab it to death.
And before your eyes it turns into the woman you love,
her breast impaled on your sword,
her mouth dribbling blood saying she loved you
but couldn’t help her tendency.
So death released her from the curse at last,
and you knew from the angelic smile on her dead face
that in spite of a life the devil owned,
love had won, and heaven pardoned her.
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