Pressure points: the body as a contact sheet`

'This is the body in which my life happened.'



What can the body prove about the life being lived inside it?

Pressure Points began with the square of residue left by an HRT patch. I started noticing other temporary marks across my body: pressure from clothing, irritation, folds, stretch marks and the impressions left by objects against the skin.

The photographs turn my body into a contact sheet, recording a period of hormonal change, ageing and uncertainty. When made at close range, the body breaks into fragments, and context falls away.

Some marks are accidental; others come from treatment or from expectations absorbed over a lifetime. Each image offers evidence of something, but never the whole experience.

“My body, my companion, which is always sending its signals.”

Virginia Woolf. (1931) The Waves. London: The Hogarth Press.