| My photographs reflect a fascination with the body as form. |  |
Bill Durgin
My photographs reflect a fascination with the body as form. The complex figurations and undulating arrangements of flesh—as the body seems to collapse into itself—create the image of an almost abstracted figure lacking appendages and hair. The physical structure becomes more than just a shell, evolving into a moving sculpture of skin, muscle, fat, and bone.
The gesture within each photograph is created through an exploration of my own physical limitations and a collaborative improvisation with dancers and performers. Often I come up with a pose, demonstrate it and then ask the model to repeat or respond to it. Each pose transmogrifies the figure toward abstraction, exaggerating or diminishing the skeletal structure until it approaches an amorphous form. I want the bodies to be recognized as bodies, but to also be detached from common perceptions of the figure. Bound within each singular view, the uncanny figures convey the body as both abject and marvelous.
Composed through a 4-by-5-view camera, I place the figure within the location and select an angle to shoot from. I then remove any furnishings to create a perspective that highlights the architecture, the light, and the figure itself. Each space is empty, but not anonymous. It is a setting not a set, within which the figure is grounded in a particular environment revealed by the traces of the doorway, ceiling, or floor. Suspended along the edges of the space, along the edges of figuration, these photographs also move along the edges of narrative, portrait, and environmental photography.
