To the left, my image of a brightly painted door, found in Santiago, Chile, dresses the body of the model.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each print from the "Clothed in Light" series is constructed from at least two photographic  images. First, there is the principal  image that forms the basis for the print you see today. In addition, there is a secondary image that is used to "clothe"  the body of the model. To the left, the  model's body is dressed in an image of a vibrating drum skin, an image I captured during the performance of a street band in Santiago.

 

Thus, in  this series the "clothing" is light from a secondary image, projected onto the model's skin and then recorded in the principal image. By using this technique, I engage both modes in which humans normally view color.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When humans see color in the natural world, it is almost always in "object mode," where  color is perceived as light reflecting off something (like a flesh-colored body). In the "illuminant mode" we perceive the light itself as bearing the color. In  these photographs, color from the secondary image is projected on skin, and our minds tend to read the images in object mode, and assume a painted body. In  fact, the bodies are flesh-colored and it is the projected image that bears the colors as it illuminates the model's skin.  The model to the left was clothed in an image of rooftops, also in Santiago.

 

This series was inspired by an exhibition entitled "Cuerpos Pintados" that I viewed in Santiago in 1992. That exhibit featured  photographs of models whose bodies had been physically painted by Chilean artists. In homage to that inspiration, at the start of my work on the series I used only images that I captured in Chile (in conscious preparation for my own style of body painting) as the light with which I "clothed" my models.

 

 

 The process does not necessarily result in immediately recognizable pairs. Directly below is an example of one of the "secondary" images, a corrugated door in downtown Santiago. To the left is the  final product, in which the gaudy tiles become stockings on the  model.