Giovanni Oscar Urso

'The Independent Woman' is also the title of a charter of the essay by Simone de Beauvoir from 1949 (The second sex). These photographs have as their subjects dolls,' sovereign objects', imitations of perfect women, emancipated and alone. The autoeroticism in which they are protagonists aim to be a symbol, an ikon of independence achieved (non-dependency) from the male. Equality between the sexes, something that once seemed so close to being achieved without too much hardship, but seen from a distance of 60 years from de Beauvoir's analysis, seems to contain the same contradictions, the same difficulties. On the other hand one has the impression of having reached an historic moment of truce: a tacit recognition, without victor or vanquished, of the impossibility of the much heralded equality.