“This led to Löyly, a Finnish term for the steam that rises from icy water when poured
onto burning stones, passing from a liquid to a gaseous state. But the term also means
ghosts – a taste of things to come – as I will explain…
Dorothée Smith never stages scenes or tells her friends and models how to pose:
with her modesty and discretion, most of them don’t even realize they’ve been
photographed. In the Löyly series, we see a dark rock rising up and blending into the
sky, undeniably bringing romantic painting to mind, along with a menacing tornadolike
double cloud and chilly frozen landscapes. But also many young people seen from
behind, often with tattooed bodies, daydreaming or withdrawn – somewhere else; a
very pale young man with glacier eyes and raven-black hair, like a recurring apparition
in the series, and the sublime face of an androgyne with a dreamy, melancholic look,
lost in an inner world, with a half-closed expression and a sensual mouth open for a
word or a kiss that won’t come. Tired and deliciously morbid, or rather morbido (soft,
gentle) since the Italian terms seems more fitting, the androyne delicately rests a
beautiful ephebian head on a velvet cushion with one arm tucked under, offered and
already withdrawn, disappearing like a fleeting, desirable apparition.”