

A cinematic photograph in a museum basement workshop, taken from the side at floor level. She sits on the concrete floor with her back against a black wall of shelves and her long bare legs straight out in front of her, and the dead swan lies across her lap with one wing open over her thigh and its neck along her arm, its head resting in her open hand, a mass of pure white across the middle of the picture. She wears only a heavy brown canvas apron, rucked up to the top of her thighs, and one worn leather boot, the other lying beside her. Daylight from one high window on the right comes down in a hard beam full of dust and lights the swan, her hands, her forearms and her bare knees; above the white her face is in half shadow, eyes closed, her dark buzz-cut head resting back against the shelves. Everything outside the beam is black. The bottom edge of the frame cuts her at the ankles. 35mm, f/4, the swan's head in her palm the sharpest thing. Muted, melancholic, hyper-realistic, fine film grain. In the lower right corner, a small pencil signature: Ziggy