Toto Frima50 x 60

She has created a seemingly endless series of photographic portraits, each using a technique known as instant photography. Portraits in a handy sx 70 format, which later become 50x60 prints, taken in one of the largest studios of the Polaroid company. These photographs all share a single theme: they are all portraits of women, quite young women, who seem to show hardly any signs of ageing over the period in which the photographs were taken. The women are often sparsely dressed or nude, sometimes a close-up of a female face is presented, sometimes a simple torso. The further back in time one goes, the greater the number of a 'fragmentary' photographs. But what remains evident is that women form the only theme of all the photographs. Closer inspection reveals, however, that appearance can of course deceive. The variety of the photographs suggests a variety of models. The challenging woman nonchalantly baring her breasts; the woman lost in thought sitting on a bed wearing only a negligée, the woman holding transparent screen with a map of the world in front of her naked body; the beauty who reminds the beholder of Botticelli's famous Venus - they are all the same woman. She is identical to the woman of the other photographs despite all apparent differences of pose, hairstyle, accessories, and settings. Toto Frima has only one theme: herself. Woman have always played a much more important role as models than as artists in art history. A multiple of portraits have been devoted to woman-kind; an even higher percentage of nudes, of course. Only the arrival of modern art brought a decisive change, and paradoxically it was photography which, in comparison with the traditional art forms, offered women.