


A photograph of a real room, bright and empty: white plaster walls, a bare pale wooden floor, one tall window out of frame throwing hard daylight across the wall, everything blown pale and clean. Taped flat to that wall is one large sheet of cream drawing paper, life size, and on it is a charcoal drawing of a naked man standing and reaching up: his right arm straight up with the elbow locked, his left hand flat beside his hip, his weight on the left leg, the right heel lifted, his shoulders pulled up by the reach and his head turned down and away. He is about forty-five, long and lean and hard-handed, narrow through the hips, a long back, big knuckles, short greying hair. The drawing is unfinished: below his knees there is nothing on the paper at all, no legs, no feet, no floor. His raised arm runs off the top edge of the sheet and carries on in charcoal directly on the plaster wall above it, the same line and the same hand, the fingers drawn on the bare wall. The drawing is made with very few long confident lines, thick and dark on the shadow side, thinning and breaking where the form turns into the light. Nothing else is in the room: no furniture, no pictures, nothing on the floor. Camera low, square on to the wall. Hard daylight, high key, sharp focus, deep depth of field. In the lower right corner of the sheet, a pencil signature: Ziggy.