Reading Lolita on Tumblr

“This makes me believe there is something more complex and interesting happening in the claiming of the “Lolita” image: a subversion and reclamation of images that fetishize, subjugate, and dehumanize into images of power, beauty, and danger. Using Lolita, the figure of the nymphet that is both ruined by and ruinous to her abuser, these girls are both telling a story – of autonomy being usurped, of being abused and claimed and harmed – and using the formidable power of ghosts – to haunt, to remind, to destroy from within.” So, about that whole Lolita aesthetic on Tumblr.

See also: our conversation with John Gall who, as art director for Vintage and Anchor books, was responsible for at least two Lolita covers, not to mention the redesign of the entire Nabokov catalog.

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