Although the figures that Mona Kuhn has photographed, whether in soft focus or through milky glass, are less statuesque than those of Adam and Eve in William Blake's illustrations for Milton's Paradise Lost, they share with Blake's drawings of the first man and woman a substantiality of presence, idealized forms, and the appearance of being nearly entirely beyond corporeal need. Whether the alertly intelligent gazes of Kuhn's subjects are aimed straight at the camera or, as is more usual, diagonally to the side; upward or downward, but never directly toward each other; their apparent intensity suggests that these (nearly invariably) youthful models are neither naive nor innocent. Judging by their pensive, studiously unsmiling, but not unfriendly, faces and their resonant eyes, they are well supplied with interior lives, even if their specific feelings are inaccessible and perhaps puzzling. While their thoughts may be restless, their bodies remain gracefully still, although not wholly relaxed. In and of themselves they are comfortable in their glowing, smooth skins, but their highly enigmatic expressions hint at psychological tensions presumably resulting from their interactions with each other, their immersion in the rustic community they have chosen to inhabit, or the events of their lives outside this terrestrial paradise. They give themselves over to the camera because of relationships of trust between the photographer and her models that were built up during whole days and evenings spent together, not simply the minutes when they were subject to the lens and the photographer's gentle but firm suggestions that they remain motionless for a few moments. She is not trespassing and her sitters seem calmly content to inhabit the modern, more populous Eden that is being depicted here. And clearly there is a here here, and it is full and sunny summer. The sequence of photographs as they appear in the book forms a narrative made up of shared interrelated interactions and incidents over the course of one bounteous day that starts with a misty sunrise reflected in a window, then moves through the hot golden middle hours and on to the lengthening shadows of later afternoon, finally devolving into lamp-lit evening. It is as if many such days have been loosely interwoven into the gauzy fabric of a single perfect day. Evidently these photographs are not only immensely attractive in their luxuriant sensuality and smoothly modulated, unsaturated color but also because they were skillfully constructed and arranged. Underlying and informing Kuhn's mastery of framing and focus is her careful study of painterly and photographic precedents, which occasionally glint through these shimmering surfaces. Here a profile turns over a shoulder toward the camera in a manner reminiscent of Vermeer; there a sleek long narrow human face resembles that of a Pisanello greyhound. Формат: 30 см x 31 см.