Purple Magazine
— F/W 2011 issue 16
Casa Museo Carlo Mollino
a collaboration by JEFF BURTON and BETONY VERNON
In 1960 the architect, furniture designer, and photographer Carlo Mollino (1905-73) took possession of a house on the Po River, in Turin, Italy, which he called the “warrior’s house of rest.” For the remainder of his life Mollino filled the house with furniture he designed and the occult objects and artifacts that he collected, but he never lived there, or slept there, not even one night. Instead he remodeled the space as a kind of mausoleum, a place of eternal consequences, where at night he would bring prostitutes and take erotic photographs of them with his Polaroid camera. These are now a recognized part of his œuvre.
In 2006 Betony Vernon visited the Mollino House in Turin and was inspired by the place and its history. She traveled there again the following year with adult film star Corina Millado to be photographed with her by the American artist Jeff Burton wearing erotic jewelry from Betony’s collection. This marked the first time since Mollino’s death, in 1973, that the house, which is now a Mollino museum — owned and preserved by Fulvio and Napoleone Ferrari and open by appointment — was used to take erotic photographs. These images are the fruit of their three days and nights of photographic homage.
