Inspiration / Matilde Søes Rasmussen
Inspiration explores tensions and contradictions: between artist and muse, photographer and model, the body and her representation, fascination and ambiguity, observation and desire.
As a former model, Rasmussen is deeply interested in how the female body has been commodified in both historical and contemporary visual representations, especially informed by her research on Audrey Munson, one of the earliest figures in the modeling industry. Both muse and tragic archetype, Munson’s lingering presence in the artist’s work becomes a subversive inquiry—where the body, like a sculpture, serves as both a site of projection and resistance, shaped by external expectations yet asserting its own agency and presence.
Both photographer and photographed, artist and model, observer and observed, Rasmussen seeks to perform questions rather than answer them. Can one critique the beauty industry and systems of female representation by photographing them? Or does the act of documentation inevitably reinforce the very structures it seeks to question?
Inspiration explores tensions and contradictions: between artist and muse, photographer and model, the body and her representation, fascination and ambiguity, observation and desire.
As a former model, Rasmussen is deeply interested in how the female body has been commodified in both historical and contemporary visual representations, especially informed by her research on Audrey Munson, one of the earliest figures in the modeling industry. Both muse and tragic archetype, Munson’s lingering presence in the artist’s work becomes a subversive inquiry—where the body, like a sculpture, serves as both a site of projection and resistance, shaped by external expectations yet asserting its own agency and presence.
Both photographer and photographed, artist and model, observer and observed, Rasmussen seeks to perform questions rather than answer them. Can one critique the beauty industry and systems of female representation by photographing them? Or does the act of documentation inevitably reinforce the very structures it seeks to question?
Inspiration explores tensions and contradictions: between artist and muse, photographer and model, the body and her representation, fascination and ambiguity, observation and desire.
As a former model, Rasmussen is deeply interested in how the female body has been commodified in both historical and contemporary visual representations, especially informed by her research on Audrey Munson, one of the earliest figures in the modeling industry. Both muse and tragic archetype, Munson’s lingering presence in the artist’s work becomes a subversive inquiry—where the body, like a sculpture, serves as both a site of projection and resistance, shaped by external expectations yet asserting its own agency and presence.
Both photographer and photographed, artist and model, observer and observed, Rasmussen seeks to perform questions rather than answer them. Can one critique the beauty industry and systems of female representation by photographing them? Or does the act of documentation inevitably reinforce the very structures it seeks to question?
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Artist: Matilde Søes Rasmussen
Book concept and Design: ilhas studio
Editing & Sequence: ilhas studio, Matilde Søes Rasmussen, Pedro Guimarães & Tiago Casanova
Copy Editor: Mazlum Nergiz
Prepress: Pedro Guimarães
Production: Tiago Casanova
Production Assistant: Émilie Tizien, Antonis Pappos & Miranda Verstraete
Cover Illustration: Anskar Beau
Printing: Gráfica Maiadouro
2025
XYZ Books
168 pages
24 x 16,5 cm
Softcover
First Edition
Edition of 500 copies
ISBN 978-989-35169-6-6
This project was further developed and produced in the scope of the Creative Europe initiative Intergalactica: books for the culture without borders, between 2024-25.