Corpus

This collection of brooding, grainy photographs of statues from the world's most notable museums offers an excellent introduction to the work of acclaimed Mexican photographer Figueroa. Sixty-nine quadratone photographs reveal the intimate, personal details of these sculpted forms, particularly the beautiful, unique imperfections of the statues' surface""skin""--details that the museum goer's cursory glance might easily miss without the aid of Figueroa's lens. Fans of dramatic black and white body portraiture (the work of Herb Ritts easily comes to mind) may not be as taken with Figueroa's first major monograph of photography; her work is sensual, but quite subtle, and demands of its audience a certain patience and appreciation for nuance.""Rather than turning living things into stone,"" Figueroa goes about""bringing stone to life,"" observes the novelist Sollers, who penned the text's afterword. In a Pygmalion-like quest, Figueroa revisits long-dormant works of art, reviving them by focusing on the human touch of their makers--the quirks and idiosyncrasies passed from creator to creation. The details that she descries render each statue more haunting and enduring for all its flaws, reaffirming its connection to humanity.