“Presenting” Maria N — a pretty, pink, premiere…
Photographer Ingret‘s set design for this MetArt new model debut series is sweetly feminine. The walls are papered in shades of pink, and two French doors, the floor, and other furnishings are white which ties in nicely with the model’s white necklace, stockings, and garter belt.
This sweet, girlish, youthful setting provides a fine backdrop for a sweet, girlish, young model. Despite the fact that Maria N is topless and bottomless from the first shot, there’s a hint of innocence here, and the wreath of delicate flowers in her hair in the introductory shots ads a pleasantly angelic touch. The stylized presentation has an almost greeting card flavor, and I mean that as a compliment — see #012 for a perfect illustration of my point.
This is a generally confident performance for this lean and well shaped 21-year-old. Certain telltales — stiff hands, for example — give away her presumed lack of modeling experience, and I think she works a touch too hard at projecting a calm, serious mood when something more spontaneous and energetically girlish would be more in keeping with the design of the pictorial. But she is a charming and pretty girl and I offer these minor complaints in the spirit of constructive, encouraging criticism.
Ingret does suffer from the tilting frame from time to time, but he also delivers some extremely pretty images in this collection. The lighting is soft and effective in #047, a subtly moody shot. The absence of pink design elements in #056 adds a feeling of mature sophistication than the more girlish compositions in the set contain. I like the backlight and the bold, seated pose (but could do without the tilt) in #098. And with #114, her beautiful body partially hidden by an open door, model and artist arrive at absolute perfection. “Presenting” Maria N is a very pretty premiere, indeed.
I tried to obey my rule of ignoring sessions that I didn’t like but this one just kept staring out at me begging for comment. Had this been photos of the waist up only I would have been mildly interested, but for me this model’s intimate areas are a complete turn off. This completely incongruous dark coloration along with the generally unpleasant shape of this most important part of the model was a complete turn off for me. The other thing I found oddly disturbing is her face, not to mention her lack of animation. Perfection sometimes is less rather than more and this is a good description of the problem. They say that the more balanced and symmetrical a face is the more appealing it will be to our senses but that is not the case here. I find her face to be slightly disturbing. If you do the old cover one half and you will see a different person trick with this model you will find it doesn’t work. This almost never happens. The 2 sides are virtually the same. This, to me, gives a sense of the unreal. It’s like I’m looking at a haunting portrait of an imaginary spirit. This in combination with the lack of animation I find disturbing. I’m hoping that you get the drift of what I am trying to convey here.
Hipshot, your comment about imaginary spirits made me laugh out loud. I know exactly what you mean, FWIW.