Ecotone

In ecology, an ecotone is a transition zone between neighbouring communities, such as woodland and meadow. Species from both can live within it. Ecotone takes its name from this overlap and photographs the human body as part of the landscape it inhabits. Skin gives the body an outline, though that line is not always enough to separate it from its surroundings.

In several photographs the green of the woodland reaches into the skin. Against rock, a pale torso comes so close to the colour of the stone behind it that the eye passes from one to the other before it notices the difference. Elsewhere, tree trunks and long grasses break the outline more directly, crossing a reclining figure or hiding most of a body until only a hand on the hip and a narrow strip of skin remain in view.

Scale changes how much attention each surface gets. A body takes up a small part of the frame at the foot of a wall of fractured rock, or rests beneath broken trunks that lean together into an arch large enough to be studied for its own sake. In a close view, small stones cling to the skin along the ribs. They have edges and colours of their own; the body is the ground on which they appear.

These are posed photographs, and each pose depends on the place. A branch has to carry the model's weight; a gap between rocks limits the space a body can occupy. The position of a shoulder records both a deliberate gesture and the surface it rests against. Even where a pose looks restful, the skin still lies on bark or stone. In Ecotone, the border between body and terrain holds only for as long as the eye insists on looking for it.