

A cinematic photograph in a long museum basement corridor, taken from low and slightly behind her. The corridor is deep black on both sides, lined with shelves of animals wrapped in white sheets, and one high window on the left drops a hard beam of daylight full of dust across the floor ahead of her. She walks away from the camera into the beam carrying the dead swan under one arm like laundry, its neck hanging down past her knee and swinging, its white body a single bright mass against her side. She wears a heavy brown canvas apron tied at the small of her bare back and worn leather boots, her long bare legs and the backs of her thighs lit by the beam, her dark buzz-cut head turned to the side so her face shows in profile, looking down at the bird's head. The right edge of the frame cuts through the swan's wing. 35mm, camera at knee height, f/5.6, the beam and the white sheets sharp. Muted, melancholic, hyper-realistic, fine film grain. In the lower right corner, a small pencil signature: Ziggy