

A luxury hosiery campaign photograph in a white sample room, a side by side comparison of two products on one body. She sits on a low wooden bench and leans back on both straight arms, hands flat on the bench behind her, and stretches both legs out in front of her toward the camera, ankles together, feet flexed. Her left leg is in a sheer black twenty denier stocking, so thin that her pale skin comes through it all the way and the fine weave opens into a visible grid over the shin and the knee. Her right leg is in a matte opaque sixty denier stocking, completely solid, a flat dead black with no skin showing at all and a soft sheen only where the light hits the curve of the calf. The two legs lie against each other down their whole length so the join between the two blacks runs as one straight line up the middle of the picture. She wears a plain black bra and nothing else. Beyond her legs and further back, still sharp, her face looks down the length of them, judging, her mouth closed, her chin tucked, the black bob and blunt fringe fallen forward. A fine gold chain anklet sits on the right ankle. Two flat paper packets lie open on the bench, one on each side of her, each with one word printed on it in clean capital letters: ZIGGY. One hard light rakes across both legs from the left so the difference between the two knits is undeniable. Four tones and they are the whole subject: white ground, pale skin, transparent black over skin, solid black. Camera low, at the height of the bench, straight on in front of her feet, close. one hard raking source, extreme high contrast, deep focus along both legs, sharp focus where the two blacks meet. Fine 35mm film grain.