

A cinematic photograph in a museum basement workshop, daylight from one high window on the left cutting a hard beam through slow dust, everything outside the beam deep black. On a scarred wooden workbench a dead swan lies on its back with its wings half open, a solid mass of pure white filling the lower half of the picture. She leans over the bench from the far side, holding the bird's head up by the beak in one big hand so the long neck rises out of the white in a single curve and ends just below her own throat. She wears a heavy brown canvas apron over bare skin, and as she leans the apron hangs forward from her body, her bare shoulders, arms and the side of her ribs lit by the beam. Her dark hair is cropped in a buzz cut. She is looking down into the bird's eye, close, the way you look at a face. The camera is low, just above the bench, looking up along the neck at her. The bottom edge of the frame cuts through the wing. 35mm, f/5.6, the feathers and her fingers on the beak sharp. Muted, melancholic, hyper-realistic, fine film grain. In the lower right corner, a small pencil signature: Ziggy