

A photograph in the top-floor room of an old building at dawn, empty, bare floorboards, one tall window off to the right giving flat grey light and a plain grey wall behind. Four pale cords, each as thick as a bootlace, come down from out of the top of the frame and are knotted around her two wrists and her two ankles. The cords hang with a slight curve in them, not pulled tight, and whoever is holding them is holding them too low, so they carry no weight and she has gone down. She has folded onto the floor in the lower third of the picture: one knee is down and that leg is folded under her, the other leg is out straight along the boards, her hips are dropped onto that folded thigh and her spine is curved over, her ribs showing along one side. Her arms are lifted only as far as the cords hold them, out and slightly away from her body, and her hands hang down loose from the wrist knots with the fingers open. Her head has fallen forward and her hair hangs over her face. Only where the cords are knotted is her skin lifted; everything else has given way. In the immediate foreground, close to the lens and out of focus, a crumpled charcoal wool coat crosses the bottom corner as a soft dark shape. The camera is at floor level, well back and to her side, shot with a long lens so she and the wall behind her are pressed flat together and the four cords run up the frame as straight parallel lines. The whole upper half of the picture is empty grey wall with only those cords crossing it. Everything is grey, black and old wood except her skin. Fine grain. In the lower right corner, a small pencil signature: Ziggy