Body Works #2

Body Works 2. Photograph: Julie Clarke 21.03.2010

Last Sunday I posted a photograph I took of my legs from the knee down. I've re-named the post Body Works #1. I took the photo because I noticed as I rested them on the coffee table in front of me, that strong sunlight streaming through the window cast shadows that appeared to cut into and totally distort the shape of my calf-muscles and other parts of the flesh. Indeed the calf-muscle of the left leg appeared swollen and the skin of the right, which was concave and bore a strange grey hue, took on the look of necrosis. I changed the photo from color to black and white and placed it horizontally, rather than vertically to obscure the content. Here's another photo. You maybe able to work this one out. I've flipped the original image vertically. If the first photograph was a kind of landscape of the body - undulating hills or a cliff face overhanging a cave, or, as others have suggested - vulva, lips or fungi; then this one might be seen as a bulbous stem emerging out of a dark space. I'm thinking that this exercise has been for me, not only about aesthetics and abstraction, but about how internal and external influences alter our perceptions.