In the palace of mirrors

In 2003, philosopher Susan Bordo argued that we live in an "empire of images" and, in recent years, this expression has become increasingly true. With a camera or an iPhone in hand, we are constantly feeding the social networks and we drown in a flood of images. We communicate through the image, we date events through images, we tell our story life and we know that of others through images and we even have Zoom meetings with another image. Today, refining the way each person presents themselves in a photo takes up a considerable part of our daily lives. The beauty of this image is has become a central element; this is particularly true for women who must now maintain it throughout their lives, much longer than before. By posting all public photos of herself each woman has become, in a way, a celebrity and every day we are overwhelmed by billions of photographs and selfies of beautiful women, whose beauty is at once celebrated, idealized and appropriated by the capitalism which made it a commodity. In the pages of In the Hall of Mirrors, Liv Strömquist analyzes the ideal contemporary feminine beauty developing his reflection in five different shutters which explore this subject in turn from a different angle. Liv Strömquist dissects the reasons for the success of influencer Kylie Jenner, evokes the biblical myth of Jacob, Rachel and Leah or the misfortunes of Empress Sissi, lingers on Marilyn's famous last photoshoot Monroe or analyzes the character of Snow White's stepmother. As many themes chosen to tell us about the mimetic desire that pushes us to imitate ourselves each other, of the close link between appearance and love, of the way of photographing women today, of the changing relationship between age and beauty and how self-image can become a burden. True to her style, always sharp, ironic and funny, Liv Strömquist supports his words with the actions of a host of people historical, actors and TV stars as well as on the thinking of philosophers, historians and sociologists such as Simone Weil, Zygmunt Baumann, Byung Chul Han, Eva Illouz, René Girard, Susan Sontag or Richard Seymour.