Friday 1 February 2019

Burning Man



No, not that Burning Man. This one is actually one of the model écorché (flayed) torsos to be found in the Royal Academy in London. When we encountered the word "écorché" on a visit there last September, I speculated to a friend that – given the way an initial acute "e" in French is often equivalent to an "s" in English – it might be connected with our word "scorched". It isn't, as far as I can determine, but the association must have sunk into my subconscious, the way these things do, only to re-emerge once I started putting disparate elements together in a photo-collage. A process which, in this case, began with the steamy "porthole" which, should you be curious, is actually part of the lid of our kettle.

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