

A photograph in the top-floor room of an old building on a bright September morning, bare boards and plain grey plaster, one tall window in the left wall throwing hard light straight across the room. Coming in at the top edge of the frame, cut off by it, is a bare hand holding a wooden airplane control: a flat main bar about thirty centimetres long held horizontal, a shorter head bar swinging on a cord beneath its centre, a leg bar hooked at its front end, and small brass screw-eyes set along both bars. Nine fine black threads drop from the screw-eyes: two to just above her ears, two to the back of her shoulders, one to the small of her back, one running through both hands at the thumb, two to just above her knees. The head, shoulder and back threads are taut and carrying her whole weight; the hand and knee threads hang slack in soft curves. She hangs from them out in the middle of the room, tipped over off the vertical and leaning back and to one side, her heels lifted a few centimetres off the boards with only her toes still down and pointing, her knees loose, her head tipped forward, her arms dangling from the shoulders with the fingers open. Her hair has fallen forward past her face and her eyes are open and resting on the boards just in front of her toes. The hard light crosses her and throws her tilted shadow and nine long thin lines across the plaster wall behind her, and everything the light does not reach goes to black. Close to the lens and out of focus, a crumpled charcoal wool coat lies across the bottom corner. The camera is far back and level with her hip, shot with a long lens, so she and the wall of shadows are pressed flat together. She stands in the left third and the shadows fill the right. Everything is grey, black and old wood except her skin. Fine grain. In the lower right corner, a small pencil signature: Ziggy