Apart from photographs showing the artist in various locations and with props related to her everyday life, the next part includes Natalia LL's more typical and by now widely recognized montaged photographs of female models performing series of gestures and facial expressions, using different props with blatantly erotic innuendos. The whole project appears to be a consciously, though loosely constructed, system based on both an impressive visual expression and powerful, iconic images.
Various scales were applied in editing the book, as well as in individual photographs. The photographs, arranged on the pages as if they were sentences, vary in sizes, an effect of which is that the book comes out as a study of photographic grammar systems, an attempt at conceptualising the artistic method grounded in repetition and permutation of themes.
Both the conceptual structure and the intimate format of the publication, which was partly consciously chosen by the artist and partly dictated by the financial and polygraphic possibilities, perfectly match her artistic trademark and bring the distinct qualities of her art to the foreground: firstly, its erotic dimension, secondly – personalistic, and thirdly – narcissistic features. Permafo – suma is a convincing artist manifesto and at the same time a fetishistic object, captivating through its low-key scale. By playing with the formats of a catalogue, an artist's portfolio, and art book, Natalia LL creates an autonomous whole, typical for the rationalistic, neo-avant garde practices of the time, which are simultaneously sensual and humorous.
photographs: Natalia LL
graphic design: Natalia LL
publisher: PERMAFO Gallery, Creative Unions' Club, Association of Polish Art Photographers Wrocław
year of publication: 1973
volume: 82 pages
format: 13.7 x 10 cm
cover: paperback, glue bound
print run: 300
Original text: polishphotobook.tumblr.com, transl. Ania Micińska, July 2015