Santoro’s aim through the bookwork is (as the title suggests) to begin to work towards what

we might call a syntax appropriate to women. She does this through the delicate and space selection, editing and juxtaposing of photographic images in this intimately scaled book (each page is approximately 16cm x 11cm). The images are of the vulva; the labia; the clitoris; of women’s genitals seen from the front, with the outer and inner lips visible above the ‘Y’ formed by the tops of the thighs; of shells; of flowers; of Greek statues; and of the ‘Y’ as represented by artists such Cranach and Raphael, missing the representation of the lips, in the same fashion as the triangle mentioned earlier as presenting the mother goddess omitted the line indicating them also. Santoro makes explicit her aim of encouraging women towards expression through an appropriate significatory system: The placing of the Greek figures, the flowers and the conch shell near the clitoris is a means of understanding the structure of the female genitals.

It is also an invitation for the sexual self expression that has been denied to women till now, and it does not intend to attribute specific qualities to one sex or the other. (Santoro 1974)